Sharada Da

A phonetic Sharada keyboard or an InScript layout works best.

Phonetic layouts map Latin-keyboard keystrokes to Sharada; InScript assigns Indic characters to fixed keys. A converter can turn Latin-letter spellings into Sharada when no keyboard is installed.

What sound does 𑆢 make?

It is the dental da, normally with an inherent short a.

Sharada consonants normally carry a short a when no vowel sign follows. A vowel sign changes that vowel; the virama 𑇀 suppresses it, leaving a consonant without a vowel or allowing the next consonant to form a cluster.

Here, dental means the tongue touches the upper teeth. In Sanskrit, 𑆝 is the separate tongue-curled ḍa, while 𑆣 is dha with an added breath of air.

Where did Sharada writing come from?

Sharada grew from older forms in the Brahmi script family.

Sharada developed from Gupta and Siddhamatrika forms of Brahmi, an ancient South Asian script family, in the 8th–9th centuries. Related branches led to Nagari and Gaudi (Proto-Bengali); Takri later descended from Sharada, and Siddham remained a related script.

It wrote Sanskrit, Kashmiri, and other languages of northern South Asia in inscriptions, coins, temple records, copper-plate charters, and manuscripts. Among the 9th-century records are Utpala-dynasty coins and a temple-jar fragment from Avantiswami; the Bakhshali mathematical manuscript on birch bark is a later example.

Sharada was a principal literary and inscriptional script until the 20th century. By the 1950s, Perso-Arabic—the Arabic script adapted for Persian—had become Kashmir's official script. As of 2025, references describe surviving Sharada mainly in religious and ceremonial use among Kashmiri Pandits, a Kashmiri Hindu community.