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The Kashmir Timeline

The Sharada Script

The script in which Kashmir wrote for a thousand years.

The Sharada Script photograph

Photo: Symphonicallyu · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

The Sharada script developed in Kashmir from older Brahmi scripts and was used to write Sanskrit and Kashmiri on birch bark and paper for centuries. It takes its name from the goddess Sharada. Its use gradually declined, and today it is kept alive mainly by Kashmiri Pandit priests and scholars.

Facts

  • Many of the oldest surviving manuscripts from Kashmir are in Sharada.
  • The Takri and Landa scripts grew out of it, and Gurmukhi, used for Punjabi, grew in turn from Landa.