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Śāradā
Kashmiri Shaivaite manuscript (17th or 18th century)
Type	Abugida
Spoken languages	Kashmiri Sanskrit
Time period	c. 800 CE–present (almost extinct)
Parent systems	Proto-Canaanite alphabet [a] Phoenician alphabet [a] Aramaic alphabet [a] Brāhmī Gupta Śāradā
Child systems	Gurmukhī Takri Landa
Sister systems	Nāgarī Siddhaṃ
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Śāradā, or Sharada, script (शारदा) is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts, developed from ca. the 8th century. The Gurmukhī script was developed from Śāradā. Originally more widespread, its use became later restricted to Kashmir, and it is now rarely used except by the Kashmiri Pandit community for ceremonial purposes. Śāradā is another name for Saraswati, the goddess of learning.

The Śāradā script was accepted for encoding in the Unicode standard.^[1][2]

Sarada Manuscripts

Panjab Digital Library^[3] is digitizing all available manuscripts in North-west India, including manuscripts of Śāradā Script.

See also

• Sharada Peeth in Kashmir

References

External links

• ancientscripts.com
• Prevalence of the Śāradā Script in Afghanistan
• Akṣara List of the Manuscript of Abhidharmadīpa , ca. the 11th Century, Collection of Sanskrit Mss. Formerly Preserved in the China Ethnic Library