Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European language group and is one of the most ancient languages of the world; it is the language of classical Indian literature, sacred texts, mantras and rituals of Hinduism, Jainism, and partly Buddhism.
The Sanskrit Devanagari alphabet is also the alphabet of Hindi and other modern languages of northern India.
Sanskrit is also one of the 22 official languages of India. Despite the misconception, Sanskrit is not a “dead” language and is spoken not only by high-born Brahmins, but also by ordinary residents, for example, in Kerala and Karnataka (in southern India) there are villages whose residents communicate in Sanskrit with each other; newspapers are published in Sanskrit in India.
Sanskrit was rightfully considered the language of the educated population, used for religious and scientific debate and liturgics, and like Latin in Europe, Sanskrit is also a scientific language; on its basis, all the terminology of Jyotish, Ayurveda, and other Vedic sciences, which have survived to this day, is built. It is also assumed that the modern languages of northern India, such as Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, etc., were formed on the basis of mixing Sanskrit and Prakrit (local languages).
Self the word "Sanskrit" means "enriched", "purified" and "sanctified" as opposed to Prakrit - dialects.
Just as any Sanskrit language developed and underwent changes, so Sanskrit, in the course of its development, went through several periods from the hymns of the Rig Veda, dating back to approximately the 2nd millennium BC to the Upanishads (period) to the epic, which was written, to the classical - modern Sanskrit, which has developed as a result of the activities of the ancient Indian linguist Panini (around the 5th century BC), who systematized Sanskrit and published a grammar textbook that is used to this day.
In its development, Sanskrit used several types of writing based on the proto-language Brahmi; it was in Brahmi that the inscriptions on the columns of Emperor Ashoka were made.
Sanskrit uses Devanagari alphabet, which is also used in modern languages Hindi, Marathi, Radhasthani, etc., Pali (Buddhist language), Nepali (official language of Nepal) and others.
Here we will focus on the Devanagari alphabet, which means “writing of the Gods” or “city writing”.
I wanted to write an article about Devanagari for a number of reasons:
1. there is a common belief that everything written in Devanagari is Sanskrit, but this is not so;
3. Having mastered Devanagari you can get closer to learning both Sanskrit and other languages of northern India, South Indian languages (Dravidian) use a different writing system, although it also originated from the ancient Brahmi, the difference in graphemes (writing of letters) is so great that it is difficult to read does not work;
4. and finally, Devanagari is simply a beautiful alphabet, and once you learn it, you will experience crazy delight from the fact that you can read;)
My goal is not to teach you to read, I just want to interest you in this amazing alphabet. However, if you simply print out this article with graphemes, it may help you along the way. I myself always print out the alphabets of the states I travel through, sometimes they save me in difficult situations.
Devanagari alphabet.
The worst thing, that is, unusual for a Russian person:
1. in Devanagari classical Sanskrit 36 letter-phonemes, some of them have different durations and combinations; in Devanagari Hindi there are several more additional letters, or rather letters with dots on the side.
2. in Devanagari there is ligatures- combinations of letters, depicted as an independent symbol, which are used often and which also need to be known along with consonants, and there are quite a few such ligatures;
3. Devanagari uses syllabary, that is, when a vowel is not written after a consonant, it is still assumed that there is an “a”, unless there is a viram icon, a sort of horizontal comma at the bottom of the base stick of the letter. In Hindi, this rule does not apply to the last consonant in a word, that is, nothing follows it by default; in Sanskrit there is a default if there is no virama.
The rest of the vowels can stand not only after the consonant in a row, as in Russian, although there is such a thing, for example, a long “and”, but also above or below the consonant too.
4. in Devanagari there is 3 more icons - anusvara and anusika- a dot and a dot above the crescent, the latter is known to everyone who has seen the sacred syllable aum. In different situations, the dot can be read as "m" or "n", although the difference is not very significant, and people understand both saNskara and saMkara.
The third icon - looks like a colon at the end of a word - is visarga, it is read as an aspirated, voiceless x, that is, an exhalation with almost no sound.
Visarga, virama, anusaika and anusvara look almost familiar;)
Consonants are arranged in groups depending on their pronunciation
Devaganagari vowels
Vowels are listed in line 1; the second row shows how the consonant “pa” changes when a vowel is added to it
Devanagari syllable formation and phonemes
This figure shows the construction of sounds, or rather syllable formation, depending on the position of the vowel and consonant - the stroke on top indicates a long vowel, IMHO, very clearly
Eat several phoneme options, which you may encounter in dictionaries
The Devanagari alphabet uses the following basic ligatures
Numbers in Devanagari
Numbers according to the rules of reading in Sanskrit, in Hindi they are read differentlyThat's all the wisdom;)
A simple text in Sanskrit is Article 1 of the Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms 
looks like in English transliteration
Sarvē mānavāḥ svatantratāḥ samutpannāḥ vartantē api cha, gauravadr̥śā adhikāradr̥śā ca samānāḥ ēva vartantē. Ētē sarvē cētanā-tarka-śaktibhyāṁ susampannāḥ santi. Api ca, sarvē’pi bandhutva-bhāvanayā parasparaṁ vyavaharantu.
You can listen to the text in Sanskrit on Google Translate.
For the keyword Sanskrit, there are several more interesting articles on the Internet on the topic of Sanskrit and commonality with Russian, etc.
PS And below this article you can say the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian), stylized as the Sanskrit Devanagari alphabet.
The oldest decipherable monuments of Indian writing are the codes of the 3rd century BC. e. King Ashoka. These inscriptions show two completely different alphabets. One of them, Kharoshthi, is considered an adaptation of the Aramaic script of the Persian Empire. This alphabet was used for several centuries AD in northeast India and adjacent areas of Afghanistan and Central Asia. The usual direction of writing, as in Semitic scripts, is from right to left, but vowels are indicated in it as modified consonants, and not using dots.
Another alphabet reflected in the inscriptions is Brahmi, the origin of which is controversial. Brahmi is the ancestor of almost all the later scripts of India and Southeast Asia, of which there are more than two hundred. Among the supposed sources of the Brahmi are the South Semitic and Aramaic scripts. (Johannes Friedrich, however, points out that recently the prevailing opinion is that the origin of the Brahmi letter is not from Aramaic, but from one of the North Semitic alphabets - Phoenician, probably between 600 and 500 BC.) Some scientists believe that Brahmi dates back to the undeciphered writings of the Indus Valley Civilization, which existed before about 1500 BC. e., or at least developed under their strong influence, but this cannot be stated with certainty until the writings of the Indus Valley are read. The direction of Brahmi writing is usually left to right, but there are also some examples of reverse writing, modeled on Semitic scripts. If this letter goes back to Aramaic, it is a very successful and bold reworking of the latter with many innovations. Braxmi is distinguished by accuracy and efficiency in conveying the features of the language for which this writing was created.
See also more information about Hindi:
Writing entered Southeast Asia through several waves of Indian cultural and religious influence, and therefore all the oldest writing systems of the Indochina peninsula, Malaysia and Indonesia can be traced back to the Brahmi script.
Around the 4th century AD e. In the north of India, the Gupta script, a variety of Braxmi, developed and became widespread. Most of the modern writing systems of North India go back to it, including Devanagari (literally “writing of the city of the gods”), which arose in the 7th century. It was written in Sanskrit and Prakrit, and is used in several modern languages, including Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali. Its characteristic feature is the upper horizontal line, from which the letters seem to hang. Perhaps this feature is explained by the excessive development of the endings of the letters when engraving them on stone. Devanagari text is written from left to right.
In the Devanagari alphabet, the vowels come first: short and long - in two variants. The length of vowels in Hindi (matra) is a semantic concept and requires strict adherence when pronouncing words.
Vowels are followed by consonants, arranged in rows (vargs) in accordance with the place of their pronunciation. For example, the first row (ka-varga, after the name of the first letter in the row) is guteral or glottal, the next is affricates, then palatal or palatal (they are also called cerebral), a series of dental and, finally, a series of labial consonants.
Outside the vargas are semivowels, sibilants and aspirates, with which the Devanagari alphabet ends. In Devanagari there is no division of letters into lowercase and uppercase.
and ISO 15919). All this allows you to use general rules for practical transcription from Indian languages into Russian.
Currently these rules apply when transmitting words:
- from the Indo-Aryan languages of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, using related varieties of Indian script (Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Bengali, etc.) and for the languages Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Maithili, Bhojpuri, as well as Rajasthani , Marathi, Gujarati, Dogri, Sindhi, Sanskrit);
- from the Dravidian languages of India and Sri Lanka, using related varieties of Indian script (Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu languages) (see also: Malayalam-Russian practical transcription, Kannada-Russian practical transcription and Telugu-Russian practical transcription).
Previously, the same transcription was used for the Indo-Aryan languages of modern Pakistan, however there are now separate rules for them, taking into account the Arabic script used for them.
Previously, due to the lack of detailed Indian geographical maps and other sources in the national graphics, geographical names of India and neighboring countries and territories were prescribed to be transferred from English maps. Practical transcription of Indian names on English maps could be done in two systems:
- transcription according to the Royal Geographical Society system, or the so-called system RGS-II;
- traditional English transcription established since the beginning of English rule in India.
Basic rules system RGS-II are:
- Long and short vowels according to this system are rendered in the same way as in the international transliteration alphabet of Sanskrit.
- Nasal vowels are expressed by combining a vowel with n: an, on, en, etc.
- Aspirated consonants are written by combining a consonant with h, just like in other systems: th, dh, kh, etc.
- Cerebral and dental consonants are not differentiated, e.g. t can equally denote both dental [t] and cerebral [ṭ].
- Sibilants ś And ṣ transmitted as sh
- Palatal c / ch transmitted as ch / chh
- Nasals ñ And ṅ transmitted as ny And ng
- Since this system is used only for modern Indian languages, it does not have signs to convey specific Sanskrit graphemes.
Traditional English transcription conveyed Indian pronunciation using conventional English spelling, often shortening and distorting the name beyond recognition. For example, Bassein instead of Vasai, Georgegarh instead of Jahāzgarh, Calcutta instead of Kolkata, etc. This system was initially not recommended for use when transcribing in Russian letters, and now it is practically not used anymore, so it is not discussed below.
Recently, spellings have become available both in the national script and in more accurate transliteration (systems such as IAST or ISO 15919), but this does not actually affect Russian practical transcription, since the difference between cerebral (retroflex) and dental consonants did not differ in the RGS-II system, still cannot be reflected in Russian graphics. The consonants ś [ɕ] and ṣ [ʂ] are generally close in pronunciation to Russian [ш] and [ш], however, according to tradition, the letter “ш” is not used in foreign names (except when borrowing from Polish and Ukrainian) and both phonemes are transmitted into Russian using “sh”.
Correspondence table
Below are Russian correspondences to the exact transliteration systems (IAST / ISO 15919) and English practical transcription (RGS), as well as the characters of the most common writing system of India - Devanagari. Asterisks (*) indicate cases discussed in more detail below.
Continuation:
|
Some features of Russian practical transcription
- Combinations aī, āī, conveying two separate vowels, are transmitted into Russian as ai: bhāī - bhai.
- gh in words of Indian origin (where it is pronounced [ɡʱ]) it is rendered as gh: Ghusurī - Ghusuri; in words of Arabic, Persian or Turkic origin (where it is pronounced in accurate speech as [ɣ]) - like G(in IAST as ġ ): Ghāzipur - Gazipur.
- kh in words of Indian origin (where it is pronounced as ) is rendered as kh: Ladākh - Ladakh; in words of Arabic, Persian or Turkic origin (where it is pronounced in accurate speech as [x]) - like X(in ISO as k͟h): Khānpur - Khanpur.
- l always transmitted through l, including at the end of a word and before a consonant: Lālpur -
The Devanagari alphabet is one of the examples of the unique systematic nature of Sanskrit. The title translates as “Divine City Letter”: - god, 
-
“urban”, “relating to the city”, “born in the city” (from m. - city). According to Monier-Williams, the name may indicate the urban origin of the alphabet, which apparently received its final edition in one of the urban cultural centers of India. The alphabet goes back to the ancient Indian script,
which also laid the foundation for Tibetan writing.
The Devanagari alphabet is characterized by the following properties:
1) has almost absolute letter-sound equivalence;
2) the order of graphemes in the alphabet is in strict accordance with the phonetic characteristics of the designated sounds
However, it should be noted that, contrary to a fairly definite theoretical interpretation of the articulatory and phonological parameters of the sounds that make up the Sanskrit alphabet, their actual pronunciation in the Indian tradition has a number of distinctive features and some variants. Therefore, along with the generally accepted European pronunciation, parallel cases and different historical interpretations of the same phonemes will also be given.
To make the phonetic material easier to understand, examples will be given from different European languages.
The first row consists of vowels: (“a” short),(“a” long), (“and” short), (“and” long), (“u” short), (“u” long), (“p” short),(“p” long), (“l” short), (“e”), (“ai”), (“o”), (“ay”). Equivalents of the sonorant vowels and , and can also be found in the phonetics of the Czech language (in Czech, for example, there is a saying where all vowels are sonorant syllabifiers: [ str č prst skrz krk ] - “pierce the throat with a finger”), as well as in the phonetics of the Hindi language. In the case of the sonorant “r” and its long variant, in the Indian tradition it is sometimes allowed to pronounce the overtone of the vowel “i”, that is, “ri” and “ri”, which is associated with the peculiarities of the Russian rendering of such words as “rishi” - prophet, in fact in fact: “rshi”, “rigveda” instead of “rgveda” 
, “amrita” instead of “amrta” and so on. Sonorousshould be pronounced like Czech - wave, - tear; or,
in the Indian tradition, as a fused " lri ", for example, a combination of these sounds in an English word: " revelry " In this case, the sound is transcribed as a combination
The following sounds are series of consonants, the so-called vargas 
, which are of decisive importance for the formation of some verbal stems with doubling, found in the forms of perfect, intensive (a specific form with the semantics of repetition or intensity of action), desiderative (desires to perform an action, synthetic version to want, desire + infinitive). The basis of the alphabet is 25 consonants :
The first row of consonants consists of velar consonants according to the place of formation and stops according to the method. The sounds alternate in the following sequence: voiceless - voiceless aspirated - voiced - voiced aspirated - nasal of the corresponding series (that is, having the same articulatory characteristics, in particular, the place and method of pronunciation). Thus, for the first row we have (in Devanagari it is customary to designate the letter through the short “a”, since, as is known, it does not have a graphic expression in the position after the consonant, unless it is followed by the viram sign 
or it is not part of the ligature, see below in the section “ Rules for writing and reading»):
This series is called 
by the first consonant of the series.
All sounds are pronounced the same as in Russian. Regarding aspiration, it should be said that it should be pronounced exactly as an aspiration, and not as a consonant + sound [x]. Aspiration- this is the slight noise of exhaled air when pronouncing a consonant. Nasal soundpronounced like an English nasal [ŋ ]in the words sing, king, sink ; that is, as a phonetic version of any n before the postopalatine k or g ; including German [ŋ ], for example, in the words “ Gang", "Wange".
The next row consists of anteropalatals in place and affricates (from Latin affr ĭ c ā re - to grind) or stop-fricatives (from Latin fr ĭ c ā re - rub) according to the method of formation:
This series is called accordingly 
The above about aspiration remains valid for this sound series.pronounced like the Russian “ch”, but a little softer;- like Italian g before vowels i and e , like English " j" in the word "jump" "or the continuous pronunciation of Russian [d+zh]. Nasal is pronounced approximately like the Russian “n”.
Then, the upper palatine or cerebral (from the Latinсĕ r ĕ brum , i , n . -brain, mind), as cuminal (from Latin c ăcūměn, m ĭ nis, n. -- extremity, apex) - according to the place of formation and occlusive according to the method.The tip of the tongue rises to the upper hard palate (but not to the alveoli, as in the case of English [ t ] and [ d ]) and, closing with it, bends slightly inward):
This is a series 
Nasal pronounced in the same way as other consonants, but in this case the soft palate lowers and the air stream passes through the nasal cavity.
The following sounds are dental:
Accordingly, a number 
All consonants are pronounced the same way as in Russian.
Labial:
Row 
Their articulation is also not very difficult.
The following sounds are semivowels:
The sound is pronounced like Russian [th]. Soundpronounced like in Russian, but in the position after another consonant it is customary to pronounce it like English “ w".
These sounds are called semivowels because their articulation is associated with the predominance of tone (voice) over noise, which brings them closer to vowels. The nasal ones also have the same qualities, due to which these representatives of consonantism are collectively called “sonants”, in contrast to the others, the formation of which is accompanied by a predominance of noise, which is why they are called “noisy”.
Row 
.
Sibilants, that is, hissing and whistling:
The first hissing sound is called "coronal" (from the Latin cǒrōna,ae f . - crown, edge). This sound is pronounced approximately like the Russian “sh” in the word “sew”. The sound is called “dorsal” (from Latin dorsum, i n . - back) and is pronounced the same as the Russian “sh”. Soundfully corresponds to Russian.
Row 
And the last aspirate (from Latin: asp ī r ā re from ad - sp ī r ā re - to exhale):
Pronounced like English " h" in the words "hear", "hit" " However, apparently, this sound tended to be vocalized and was pronounced: [γ
] - a variant of the Russian “g” in combination between vowels. A voiceless version of this sound, the so-called visarga 
, is indicated by the sign: (a kind of colon) and is traditionally pronounced as a slight aspiration at the absolute end of words in combination with the vowel sound [e]. For example, the word 
- hermit, ascetic, pronounced: 
.Both of these sounds are called pharyngeal (from the Greek pharynx - “pharynx”, that is, guttural sounds).
In addition, in Devanagari there is also a special sign for transmitting nasal sounds, called anusvara 
,
which in Devanagari looks like a dot above the initial letter of a syllable and has 2 main types in transcription: and However, the actual nature of its sound depends on the consonants behind it. As a pure nasalization (pure, real anusvara in transcription is expressed by the sign:, ordinary anusvara:), as, for example, in French or Polish, anusvara is pronounced only before noisy fricatives and semivowels (and in this case it is located in the dictionary before the initial one), and also at the absolute end of words; in other cases, it is pronounced as the corresponding nasal sound of the row to which the consonant following it belongs (including the nasal of this row): for example, 
(wandering) pronounced like 
,
that is, like a nasalrow in which - initial.
The oldest decipherable monuments of Indian writing are the codes of the 3rd century BC. e. King Ashoka. These inscriptions show two completely different alphabets. One of them, Kharoshthi, is considered an adaptation of the Aramaic script of the Persian Empire. This alphabet was used for several centuries AD in northeast India and adjacent areas of Afghanistan and Central Asia. The usual direction of writing, as in Semitic scripts, is from right to left, but vowels are indicated in it as modified consonants, and not using dots.
Another alphabet reflected in the inscriptions is Brahmi, the origin of which is controversial. Brahmi is the ancestor of almost all the later scripts of India and Southeast Asia, of which there are more than two hundred. Among the supposed sources of the Brahmi are the South Semitic and Aramaic scripts. (Johannes Friedrich, however, points out that recently the prevailing opinion is that the origin of the Brahmi letter is not from Aramaic, but from one of the North Semitic alphabets - Phoenician, probably between 600 and 500 BC.) Some scientists believe that Brahmi dates back to the undeciphered writings of the Indus Valley Civilization, which existed before about 1500 BC. e., or at least developed under their strong influence, but this cannot be stated with certainty until the writings of the Indus Valley are read. The direction of Brahmi writing is usually left to right, but there are also some examples of reverse writing, modeled on Semitic scripts. If this letter goes back to Aramaic, it is a very successful and bold reworking of the latter with many innovations. Braxmi is distinguished by accuracy and efficiency in conveying the features of the language for which this writing was created.
See also more information about Hindi:
Writing entered Southeast Asia through several waves of Indian cultural and religious influence, and therefore all the oldest writing systems of the Indochina peninsula, Malaysia and Indonesia can be traced back to the Brahmi script.
Around the 4th century AD e. In the north of India, the Gupta script, a variety of Braxmi, developed and became widespread. Most of the modern writing systems of North India go back to it, including Devanagari (literally “writing of the city of the gods”), which arose in the 7th century. It was written in Sanskrit and Prakrit, and is used in several modern languages, including Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali. Its characteristic feature is the upper horizontal line, from which the letters seem to hang. Perhaps this feature is explained by the excessive development of the endings of the letters when engraving them on stone. Devanagari text is written from left to right.
In the Devanagari alphabet, the vowels come first: short and long - in two variants. The length of vowels in Hindi (matra) is a semantic concept and requires strict adherence when pronouncing words.
Vowels are followed by consonants, arranged in rows (vargs) in accordance with the place of their pronunciation. For example, the first row (ka-varga, after the name of the first letter in the row) is guteral or glottal, the next is affricates, then palatal or palatal (they are also called cerebral), a series of dental and, finally, a series of labial consonants.
Outside the vargas are semivowels, sibilants and aspirates, with which the Devanagari alphabet ends. In Devanagari there is no division of letters into lowercase and uppercase.