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Scripts & Magical Alphabets

Siddhamatrka

Brahmic Script Family
Origin Current in Indian inscriptions and manuscripts from about the sixth century CE.

Siddhamatrka is the North Indian script hand that grows out of the late Brahmi of the Gupta period and is current in Indian inscriptions and manuscripts from about the sixth century CE. It is the direct ancestor of the Siddham script used in East Asian Buddhist calligraphy for the Sanskrit of tantric texts and seed syllables, and stands alongside Brahmi's other descendants, Devanagari, Sharada and the rest, as one of the intermediate Gupta-period hands from which the later Brahmic scripts of South Asia diverged.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
Current in Indian inscriptions and manuscripts from about the sixth century CE. 1
Place of Origin
Northern India. 1
Attributions
Tradition
A Brahmic script ancestral to Devanagari and to the Siddham script used to write Buddhist texts in East Asia. 1
Identity
Script Type
An abugida of the Gupta Brahmi tradition. 1
Script type (class)
Abugida 1
Connections

Succeeded By

Source Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan LanguagesRichard Salomon

Successor Of

Grows out of the late Brahmi of the Gupta period.

Source Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan LanguagesRichard Salomon
Sources
1. Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages
Richard Salomon, Oxford University Press, 1998on the Brahmic family of scriptsView the Source

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