Śāradā
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
Sister systems	Nāgarī Siddhaṃ
Kashmiri Shaivaite manuscript (17th or 18th century)
[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. The name śāradā is derived from a Sanskrit term meaning "autumnal".

An effort is underway to develop the Śāradā script for use in digital media by encoding the script in the Unicode standard, for which a proposal^[1] to allocate the script in the Unicode Roadmap has been submitted as the first step.

See also

• Sharada Peeth in Kashmir

References

External links

• ancientscripts.com
• Prevalence of the Śāradā Script in Afghanistan