Kaithi script

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kaithī (कैथी)
Font Abugida
languages Angika , Awadhi , Bhojpuri , Magahi , Maithili , Urdu
Usage time 16th to mid-20th century
Used in North India ( Uttar Pradesh , Bihar and others)
ancestry Brahmi script
 →  Gupta script
  →  Nagari script
   →  Kaithī (कैथी)
Derived Sylheti Nagari , Mahajani
relative Devanagari , Gujarati script , Bengali script
Unicode block 11080-110CF
ISO 15924 Kthi
Kaithi handwritten.jpg

Kaithi (कैथी), also Kayathi or Kayasthi, is the name of a historical script that was used in large parts of northern India , especially in the former north-western provinces of Oudh (today: Uttar Pradesh ) and Bihar .

It has been used in legal, administrative, and private records.

A proposal to encode the Kaithi script in the Unicode standard was accepted by the Unicode Technical Committee for the area U + 11080–110CF .

Word origin

The Kaithi script derives its name from the word Kayastha , a social group ( Jati ) of northern India that traditionally consists of scribes and officials . The Kayastha community was closely associated with the princely courts and colonial governments of Northern India, and were employed by them to record and update revenue transactions, legal documents and title deeds, prepare general correspondence, and litigate at the royal (court) courts and associated institutions to record. The script they used was named Kaithi.

history

Kaithi script was printed in the middle of the 19th century.

Documents in the Kaithi script can be traced back to at least the 16th century. The use of the script was widespread during the Mughal Empire . In the 1880s, during the British Raj , the script was recognized as an official script in courts in Bihar . Although Kaithi was generally more widespread than Devanagari in some areas , it lost ground to the latter in the power struggle for official recognition.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Pandey, Anshuman. 2007. Proposal to encode the Kaithi Script in ISO / IEC 10646 (PDF; 3.8 MB)
  2. ^ King, Christopher R. 1995. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. (German: One Language, Two Writings: The Hindi Movement in North India in the 19th Century), New York: Oxford University Press.
  3. ↑ Grierson, George A. 1899. A Handbook to the Kaithi Character. (German: A manual on the character of the Kaithi), Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.