Siddhaṃ script

( ) (also known as Kutila ) is an Indic script used in India from the 6th century to the 13th century. Also known in its later evolved form as Siddhamātṛkā, Siddham is a medieval Brahmic abugida, derived from the Gupta script and ancestral to the Nāgarī, Eastern Nagari, Tirhuta, Odia and Nepalese scripts. The Siddham script was widely used by Indian Buddhists and still remains in use by East Asian Buddhists, especially for writing mantras, seed syllables, and dharanis.

( ) (also known as Kutila ) is an Indic script used in India from the 6th century to the 13th century. Also known in its later evolved form as Siddhamātṛkā, Siddham is a medieval Brahmic abugida, derived from the Gupta script and ancestral to the Nāgarī, Eastern Nagari, Tirhuta, Odia and Nepalese scripts. The Siddham script was widely used by Indian Buddhists and still remains in use by East Asian Buddhists, especially for writing mantras, seed syllables, and dharanis. ==Name== The word means "accomplished", "completed" or "perfected" in Sanskrit. The script received its name from the practice of writing , or ('may there be perfection'), at the head of documents. The name Siddhamātṛkā is reported by the 11th-century scholar Al-Biruni, which seems to be corroborated by the term "Siddhaṃ," which is the term used for the script by Buddhist tradition in East Asia. This makes the Siddhaṃ script one of the few Indian scripts whose traditional name is known from historical sources. In Chinese, the name is rendered as xitan wenzi ( ), and in Japanese as . Because of the prominent bends and loops of the letterforms, some epigraphists and historians referred to the script as Kuṭila (Sanskrit for "crooked" or "bent"). Other names for the script include . ==History== The script traces directly back to Early Brāhmī, the foundational script of South Asia, which was used during the Mauryan period (c. 3rd century BCE). Between the 4th and 6th centuries CE, Ashokan Brāhmī diversified into distinct regional styles. In Northern India, it developed into the Gupta script (sometimes termed Late Brahmi or Early Nagari), which served as the official administrative and literary hand of the Gupta Empire. During the late 6th century CE, the Gupta script underwent structural and calligraphic refinements, giving rise to Siddhamātṛkā. This transitional period is defined by the introduction of sharply angled stroke terminations and solid triangular or wedge-shaped head-marks (śirorekhā). Among the earliest specimens of the Siddhaṃ script are the Bodhgaya inscription of Mahanaman, dated 588/89 CE, and the Lakhamandal inscription. By the 7th century CE, Siddhaṃ had become the primary script used across Northern India for transcribing classical Sanskrit literature, royal land-grant charters (tāmra-paṭṭa), and religious texts, particularly within Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhist monastic universities, such as Nālandā and Vikramaśīla. Siddhaṃ was used not only in northern and eastern India but also in the west, where it displaced the southern-style scripts that had previously predominated there. Siddhaṃ occasionally appeared in the Deccan and even the far south, as in the Pattadakal bilingual inscription. In this respect Siddhamātṛkā precursed the later role of its daughter script Devanāgarī, as a quasi-national script that was often preferred for writing Sanskrit, even outside the regions where it originated. . Bibliothèque nationale de France]] ==Characteristics== is an abugida rather than an alphabet, as each character indicates a syllable, including a consonant and (possibly) a vowel. If the vowel sound is not explicitly indicated, the short 'a' is assumed. Diacritic marks are used to indicate other vowels, as well as the anusvara and visarga. A virama can be used to indicate that the consonant letter stands alone with no vowel, which sometimes happens at the end of Sanskrit words. Siddhaṃ texts were usually written from left to right then top to bottom, as with other Brahmic scripts, but occasionally they were written in the traditional Chinese style, from top to bottom then right to left. Bilingual Siddhaṃ-Japanese texts show the manuscript turned 90 degrees clockwise and the Japanese is written from top to bottom, as is typical of Japanese, and then the manuscript is turned back again, and the Siddhaṃ writing is continued from left to right (the resulting Japanese characters appear sideways). Over time, additional markings were developed, including punctuation marks, head marks, repetition marks, end marks, special ligatures to combine conjuncts and rarely to combine syllables, and several ornaments of the scribe's choice, which are not currently encoded. The nuqta is also used in some modern Siddhaṃ texts. ===Vowels and syllables=== Siddhaṃ includes five long vowels, five short vowels, two vocalic consonants, ṛ and ḷ which are treated as vowels and may be short or long, and two part-vowels, anusvara ṁ and visarga, ḥ. Independent vowel letters are used for word-initial vowels. Otherwise, vowels, vocalics, and part-vowels are written as diacritics attached to consonants. Each consonant in Siddham includes an inherent vowel a, so the letter , for example, is pronounced ka. Adding a vowel diacritic modifies the vowel sound, so plus the diacritic , gives the syllable , ko. The absence of a vowel is marked with a virāma , for example, plus creates an isolated consonant k. ===Consonants=== Two conjuncts are also treated as part of the alphabet. ===Conjuncts=== Alternative forms of conjuncts that contain . ====ṛ syllables==== ====Some sample syllables==== ==Usage== As was done with Chinese characters, Japanese Buddhist scholars sometimes created multiple characters with the same phonological value to add meaning to Siddhaṃ characters. This practice, in effect, represents a 'blend' of the Chinese style of writing and the Indian style of writing and allows Sanskrit texts in Siddhaṃ to be differentially interpreted as they are read, as was done with Chinese characters that the Japanese had adopted. This led to multiple variants of the same characters. In Japan, the writing of mantras and copying/reading of sutras using the script is still practiced in the esoteric schools of Shingon Buddhism and Tendai as well as in the syncretic sect of Shugendō. The Taishō Tripiṭaka version of the Chinese Buddhist canon preserves the characters for most mantras, and Korean Buddhists still write bījas in a modified form of . A recent innovation is the writing of Japanese language slogans on T-shirts using bonji. Japanese has evolved from the original script used to write sūtras and is now somewhat different from the ancient script. It is typical to see written with a brush, as with Chinese writing; it is also written with a bamboo pen. In Japan, a special brush called a is used for formal calligraphy. The informal style is known as . ==Siddhaṃ fonts== is still largely a hand written script. Some efforts have been made to create computer fonts, though to date none of these are capable of reproducing all of the conjunct consonants. Notably, the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association has created a font for their electronic version of the Taisho , though this does not contain all possible conjuncts. The software Mojikyo also contains fonts for Siddhaṃ, but split Siddhaṃ in different blocks and requires multiple fonts to render a single document. A input system which relies on the CBETA font Siddhamkey 3.0 has been produced. ==Unicode== Siddhaṃ script was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0. The Unicode block for Siddhaṃ is U+11580–U+115FF:

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