Blackwell Reference Online

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A variant of Nāgarī, the Kashmiri script is a member of the northern Indian group of Brāhmī-derived scripts which can be traced back to the Śāradā script of the early ninth century ce . It is still in use in Jammu and Kashmir and adjacent states in India and Pakistan, although Kashmiri is also written in the Urdu variety of Perso-Arabic. Usage of the two scripts is largely distributed along religious lines, the former generally being used by Hindus, the latter by Moslems. Like all Brāhmī descendants the Kashmiri script is a syllabic alphabet with independent V letters and diacritic satellites grouped around the C letters to indicate Vs other than the inherent a ( table 5 ). See also brāhmī writing ; indian writing systems . Table 5 The Kashmiri syllabic alphabet ... log in or subscribe to read full text