The Gaudi script (Gāuṛi lipi), also known as the Proto-Bengali script[1][2] and sometimes the Proto-Oriya script,[3] is an abugida in the Brahmic family of scripts. By the fourteenth century, Gaudi script had begun to differentiate and gradually developed into the Bengali-Assamese (Eastern Nagari), Odia,[a] and Maithili script.[1][4]
Silver coin with Gaudi script, Harikela Kingdom, circa 9th–13th century
Naming
The Gaudi script is named after the Gauda Kingdom (Gāuṛ Rājya) of Gauḍa (region) in ancient Bengal by the German scholar Georg Bühler.[5] Medieval Gauḍa (region) is currently known as Bengal (region). Despite this name, the script was also used in Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, neighbouring parts of Nepal and Rakhine in Myanmar. The script is called by different names in different regions such as Proto-Assamese, Proto-Bengali, Proto-Maithili, Proto-Oriya. Which is why Sureshchandra Bhattacharyya suggests neutral names such as the abbreviated Proto-BAM, Proto-BAMO.[6]
History
Silver Coin of Danujmarddana, 1417
The Gaudi script appeared in ancient Eastern India as a northeastern derivative of the Siddham,[1] derived from Gupta. According to the scholar Bühler, the Gaudi (or Proto-Bengali) script is characterized by its cursive letters and hooks or hollow triangles at the top of the verticals.[7] In the 11th century, famous Persian scholar Al-Biruni wrote about the script. He mentioned amongst Indian alphabets, Gaudi is used in the purva desa (Eastern County).[5]
The modern eastern scripts (Bengali-Assamese, Odia, and Maithili) became clearly differentiated around the 14th and 15th centuries from Gaudi.[1] While the scripts in Bengal, Assam and Mithila remained similar to each other, the Odia script developed a curved top in the 13th-14th century and became increasingly different.[8]
^Masica, Colin (1993). The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN9780521299442. Proto-Bengali gave birth to the Maithili, Modern Bengali (settled in the seventeenth century: Assamese is a nineteenth-century variant), and Oriya scripts, as well as the Manipuri and Newari scripts for two Tibeto Burman languages.
^Tripāṭhī, Kunjabihari (1962). The Evolution of Oriya Language and Script. Utkal University. p. 32. Retrieved 21 March 2021. Proto-Oriya (The Proto-Bengali script script of Bühler)
^Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (2003). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge language family series. London: Routledge. p. 109. ISBN0-7007-1130-9. In the northeast, meanwhile separately evolved into a form referred to as 'proto-Bengali' or Gaudī, which prevailed until the fourteenth century, by which time it had begun to be differentiated into the modern eastern scripts, Bangla-Asamiya, Maithilī and Oriya.
^"[T]he phase when the curved tops - so prominent now in many of the Oriya letters - were just appearing, initiating the parting of ways from the proto-[Bengali-Assamese-Maithili] phase. The beginning and progress of this trend can be noticed in many of the Orissa [inscriptions] of the 13th-14th centuries A.D." (Bhattacharyya 1969:56f)
