Nagari

Nagari, also spelled Nāgarī or Nagari, is a term used for an ancient Brahmi-derived script family that originated in the Indian subcontinent. It refers to medieval forms of writing that served as precursors to the modern Devanagari script. Nagari was used for Sanskrit as well as Prakrit and early vernacular languages, with inscriptions and manuscripts found across northern and central India and in parts of Nepal.

Structurally, Nagari is an abugida, in which consonants carry an inherent vowel that is modified by diacritic marks to represent other vowels. It is typically written from left to right and features a distinctive horizontal headstroke, or shirorekha, that links letters within a word. Conjunct consonants and ligatures were developed to represent consonant clusters common in Indo-Aryan languages.

Development and legacy: Nagari matured into the Devanagari script during the medieval period. Devanagari became the standard script for Sanskrit and many modern Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindi and Marathi, while related Nagari variants contributed to regional scripts in the broader Devanagari family. In contemporary usage, the term Nagari is sometimes employed as an umbrella label for Devanagari and its historical varieties, though most modern discussions distinguish Devanagari as the standardized script.

Today, Devanagari is widely used in India and Nepal for education, media, and digital communication. It is encoded in Unicode as Devanagari, reflecting its status as the contemporary descendant of the Nagari tradition.