Other vowels were indicated using a variety of diacritics and separate letters. Type of writing system: Abugida / Syllabic Alphabet - each letter represents a consonant with an inherent vowel.

The earliest known inscriptions in the Brāhmī alphabet are those of King Asoka (c.270-232 BC), third monarch of the Mauryan dynasty.īrāhmī was used to write a variety of languages, including Sanskrit and Prakrit. Another theory is that Brāhmī developed from the Indus or Harappa script, which was used in the Indus valley It is thought to have been modelled on the Aramaic or Phoenician alphabets, and appeared in India sometime before 500 BC.

Modern Indian alphabets, and of a number of otherĪlphabets, such as Khmer and Tibetan. The Brāhmī alphabet is the ancestor of most of the 40 or so