Writing and Printing

Assamese alphabet

The Assamese alphabet (Assamese: অসমীয়া বৰ্ণমালা, romanized: Ôxômiya Bôrnômala) is a writing system of the Assamese language and is a part of the Bengali-Assamese script. This script was also used in Assam and nearby regions for Sanskrit as well as other languages such as Bodo (now Devanagari), Khasi (now Roman), Mising (now Roman), Jaintia (now Roman) etc. The current Assaamese alphabet is a result of the replacement of the traditional Assamese script by the Bengali script that happened during the 19th and 20th centuries. As a result of which, the traditional Assamese script is mostly unintelligible to those trained in the current Bengali-Assamese script. The traditional Assamese script is a continuous development from the 5th-century Umachal/Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscriptions written in an eastern variety of the Gupta script, adopting significant traits from the Siddhaṃ script in the 7th century. By the 17th century three styles of the traditional Assamese script could be identified (bamuniya, kaitheli and garhgaya) that converged to a single style following typesetting required for printing. The present standard Assamese alphabet is identical to the Bengali alphabet except for two letters, ৰ (ro) and ৱ (vo); and the letter ক্ষ (khya) has evolved into an individual consonant by itself with its own phonetic quality whereas in the Bengali alphabet it is an original conjunct of two letters (ক + ষ). The ৰ and ৱ historically existed in the Bengali script also. In the 14th century Madhava Kandali under the patronage of the Kachari Varaha king Mahamanikya used the traditional Assamese script to compose the famous Saptakanda Ramayana, which is the Assamese translation of Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana. Similarly, poets like Hema Saraswati and Harivara Vipra used the script for compositions like the Prahlada Charita, Hara-Gauri-Sambad, Babrubahanar Yuddha, etc under the patronage of the Kamata king Durlabhnarayan. Later, Sankardev used it in the late 15th and 16th centuries to compose his oeuvre in Assamese and Brajavali dialect, the literary language of the bhakti poems (borgeets) and dramas. The Buranjis were written during the Ahom period in the Assamese language using the traditional Assamese script. The first king in medieval Assam to issue an Assamese coin was the Kachari king Vira-vijayanarayana in 1520 AD.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Coelbren y Beirdd
• ▸East Turkestan
• ▸Balochi alphabets

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