Buginese letter da

It is the Lontara base letter for the syllable da. Its consonant has a built-in a vowel; a vowel sign can change that vowel to form another syllable.

On its own, ᨉ represents one syllable, not a full message. Lontara names both the script and the texts written in it, so the surrounding words supply the message.

Buginese writing is attested by the fourteenth century. A Gowa chronicle links Daeng Pamatte, a port official in the South Sulawesi kingdom of Gowa, with organizing Makassarese historical records in the early 16th century. Scholars read this as record-keeping work, not proof that one person invented the script.

What was Lontara used for?

It recorded official history, daily affairs, practical knowledge, and literature.

Written works include royal genealogies and chronicles, diaries and treaties, customary law and shipping rules, guides to farming and medicine, and epics. Scribes used palm-leaf strips and later paper volumes.

Why do old Lontara letters look different?

Palm-leaf hands and standard print forms used different shapes. Older and standard forms could appear together in one manuscript. The standard print forms represented by this character set developed in the mid-19th century, so a font-drawn ᨉ cannot reproduce every historical hand.

Buginese is one of the eastern Brahmi scripts, a branch of writing traditions rooted in South Asia. Kawi, a later Indonesian script, may be a shared ancestor of Buginese and other scripts; a connection with Javanese has also been proposed.

An older Makassarese script, ukiri' jangang-jangang (“bird writing”), fell out of use in the 19th century. Lontara bilang-bilang is another distinct system, a number-based code used in Bugis poetry. Buginese Lontara was adapted with added letters for the Bima and Ende languages.