Bengali–Assamese script
The Bengali–Assamese script, also known as Eastern Nagari, is a modern eastern Indic script that emerged from the Brahmi script. Gaudi script is considered the ancestor of the script. It is known as Bengali script among Bengali speakers, as Assamese script among Assamese speakers, and Eastern-Nāgarī is used in academic discourse.
| Bengali–Assamese বাংলা-অসমীয়া | |
|---|---|
Image 1: The text, from the 18th-century Hastividyārnava, commissioned by Ahom king Siva Singha, reads: sri sri mot xivo xingha moharaja. The modern Bengali glyph "র" currently used for ra is used in this pre-modern Assamese/Sanskrit manuscript for va, the modern form of which is "ৱ". Though the modern Assamese alphabet does not use this glyph for any letter, modern Tirhuta continues to use this for va. Image 2: The constitutional names as well as the native names (in Eastern Nagari and Latin transliterations) of the 3 official languages of the Indian Republic that use the Eastern Nagari writing system as their official scripts | |
| Script type | |
Time period | c. 1100–present |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| Official script | for Assamese language, Bengali language and Meitei language (constitutionally termed as Manipuri) |
| Languages | Assamese, Bengali, Bishnupriya, Meitei, Sylheti, Santali, Kokborok, Garo, Hajong, Chakma, Chittagonian, Maithili, Kamtapuri, Urdu and others. |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Child systems | Assamese, Bengali, Tirhuta |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Beng (325), Bengali (Bangla) |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Bengali |
| U+0980–U+09FF (Bengali), U+011480–U+0114DF (Tirhuta) | |
| Part of a series on | |
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| Officially used writing systems in India | |
| Category | |
| Brahmic scripts | |
| Arabic derived scripts | |
| Alphabetical scripts | |
| Related | |
| Brahmic scripts |
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| The Brahmi script and its descendants |
It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic for official use by the Assamese language, Bengali language and Meitei language (officially called "Manipuri"), three of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic.
Besides Bengali and Assamese it is used to write Bishnupriya, Chakma, Meitei (Manipuri), Santali and other languages — historically, it was used for old and middle Indo-Aryan and it is still used for Sanskrit. Other languages, such as Bodo, Karbi, Maithili and Mising were once written in this script. The two major alphabets in this script – Assamese and Bengali – are virtually identical, except for two characters — Assamese differs from Bengali in one letter for the /r/ sound, and an extra letter for the /w/ or /v/ sound.