Monday, March 05, 2012

#Sanskrit, sources and scripts

According to the English #Wikipedia, the Sanskrit language is written in Devanāgarī, various Brāhmī-based alphabets, and the Latin script. Practically we assume that Sanskrit is written in the Devanagari script and for its Wikipedia that is fine.

When Sanskrit sources exist in many scripts or alphabets, and particularly when the Brahmi based alphabets are not in common use, it is even more interesting for the Sanskrit community to find freely licensed fonts for these alphabets.
Asokan Edict - Delhi Inscription

The Omniglot website provides a lists of different scripts used for Sanskrit
Writing system used to write Sanskrit
Brāhmi, Devanāgari, Grantha, Kharoṣṭhi, Śāradā, Siddham, Thai, Tibetan 
Syllabic alphabets / abugidas 
Ahom, Balinese, Batak, Bengali, Brahmi, Buhid, Burmese, Chakma, Cham, Dehong Dai, Devanagari, Dhives Akuru, Ethiopic, Evēla Akuru, Gondi, Grantha, Gujarati, Gupta, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Hanuno'o, Hmong, Javanese, Kannada, Kharosthi, Khmer, Lanna, Lao, Lepcha, Limbu, Lontara/Makasar, Malayalam, Manpuri, Modi, New Tai Lue, Oriya, Pallava, Phags-pa, Ranjana, Redjang, Shan, Sharda, Siddham, Sindhi, Sinhala, Sorang Sompeng, Sourashtra, Soyombo, Sundanese, Syloti Nagri, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Takri, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tocharian, Varang Kshiti
It may be that it is not only a Brahmi font that will add more value to the Sanskrit Wikisource for original texts in Sanskrit. An original text is written in its original script and such a script may have different styles. It is great that with the WebFonts extension we can truly provide an authentic experience. It is just a matter of having the freely licensed fonts and an expressed demand.
Thanks,
     GerardM

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