Devanagari

In human civilisation, languages evolved first, and then came scripts. The Devanagari script is one of the oldest scripts of India, having evolved from the ancient Brahmi script. It came to be adopted widely from around the 7th century CE, and is the world’s fourth most used script after Latin, Chinese and Arabic. It is used in nearly 120 languages and dialects, including Nepali, Marathi and, of course, Hindi. It is also the script in which Sanskrit, the language of holy Hindu scriptures, is written. In fact, the word Devanagari means ‘that from the city of gods’. Its distinguishing feature is a horizontal bar drawn at the top to connect the letters forming each word.