Origin
The Brahmi script is one of the oldest scripts in the Indian subcontinent and the ancestor of many South and Southeast Asian scripts. Its history goes back at least to the 3rd century BCE, and its earliest inscriptions appear on the Edicts of Ashoka. Historians suppose that Brahmi evolved from older symbols employed in commerce and administration, although its origins remain controversial. Some suggest connections to Semitic scripts such as Aramaic, brought in through ancient trade routes, while others present the case of a purely local development under the influence of the now-undeciphered Indus script. The writing system underwent comparatively minor evolutionary developments from the Mauryan era (3rd century BCE) all the way to the early Gupta era (4th century CE), and it is believed that as late as the 4th century CE, a literate individual could easily read and comprehend Mauryan inscriptions. Somewhere down the line afterwards, the art of reading the original Brahmi script was lost. The earliest (indisputably dated) and best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. Over time, Brahmi evolved into regional variants, giving rise to scripts such as Devanagari, Tamil-Brahmi, and others.
The Sharada script appeared much later, dating back to the 8th century CE, in the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, mainly in Kashmir. It evolved from the Gupta script, which was itself a branch of Brahmi. Sharada was written mainly for Sanskrit and subsequently Kashmiri, mainly in religious and philosophical works. The script was common in Kashmir and surrounding areas until around the 13th century, when it came to be gradually replaced by regular use of scripts such as Devanagari. It is now mostly found in manuscripts and inscriptions and is of cultural and liturgical importance to Kashmiri Pandits.
