DEVANAGARI, da'va-na'ga-re, or NAGARI. The name given to the character in which San skrit is generally written. especially in northern and middle India. The Hindus commonly em ploy the second term rather than the first. The word //agar/ means 'of the city, urban' (writing) ; (Pramignri signifies • (writing) of the divine city.' As the Arab chronographer Albirani in his account of India (about A.D. 1030, trans. Sachau. i. 173) mentions a kind of writing called ugara as in use in Malwa, whose chief city is Ujjain. it has been thought that the name of this script, urban, urbane, may possibly have some connection with King Vikrama's eapital. which was a famous seat of learning and literature. The Nagari alphabet consists of forty-eight let ters. and it is written from left to right. It is believed to have assumed its present characteris tic form about the eighth century A.D., and, like
the other Ilindu scripts, it is traceable back to the oldest form of Indian alphabet, the Briemi lipi, or Writing of Brahma. which is known from coins and inscriptions of about B.C. 350. The Bralimi itself is held to be an adaptation of a form of Semitic writing that may perhaps have found its way into India as far back as the eighth century B.C. In modern times the earliest instance yet recorded (1902) of Devanagari let ters being employed in a printed European book is found in live tables contributed to Kir•her's China illustrala (Amsterdam, 1007) by Hein rich Roth, a Oerman who had lived a number of years in India as a missionary. On the Nagari its paleographic sources, consult the standard work of Bidder, Indisehe Pantographic (Strassburg. 1896). See ...ALPHABET; SANSKRIT.