NandinÃÂgarë is a Brahmic script derived from the NÃÂgarë script which appeared in the 7th century AD. This script and its variants were used in the central Deccan region and south India, and an abundance of Sanskrit manuscripts in NandinÃÂgarë have been discovered but remain untransliterated. Some of the discovered manuscripts of Madhvacharya of the Dvaita Vedanta school of Hinduism are in NandinÃÂgarë script.
It is a sister script to DevanÃÂgarë, which is common in other parts of India.
NÃÂgarë comes from (), which means city.
There have been NandinÃÂgarë inscriptions from the Kakatiya period found in Mahabubabad, located 212 km from Nandi Nagar, Hyderabad.
The first part of the term "Nandi" is ambiguous in its context. It may mean "sacred" or "auspicious" (cf. Nandi verses in Sanskrit drama). Nandi is the name of Lord Siva's Vrishabhavahana (bull vehicle), a revered icon, and it may be the source of the name.
NandinÃÂgarë is a BrÃÂhmë-based script that was used in southern India between the 11th and 19th centuries AD for producing manuscripts and inscriptions in Sanskrit in south Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It derives from the central group of NÃÂgarë scripts and is related to DevanÃÂgarë. There are also several styles of NandinÃÂgarë, considered by scholars as variant forms of the script.
Some of the earliest inscriptions in NandinÃÂgarë have been found in Tamil Nadu. The 8th century Narasimha Pallava's stone inscriptions in Mamallapuram on Tamil Nadu's coast, the 10th-century coins from Chola king Rajaraja's period, the Paliyam copper plate inscriptions of the 9th century Ay king Varagunam are all in NandinÃÂgarë script. A Rigveda manuscript has been found written in NandinÃÂgarë script, as well as manuscripts of other Vedas. Manuscripts of the first century BCE Vikramacarita, also known as the "Adventures of Vikrama" or the "Hindu Book of Tales", have been found in Nandinagari script.
In a Travancore temple of Kerala, an Anantasayana Mahatmya palm-leaf manuscript was found, and it is in NandinÃÂgarë script.
NandinÃÂgarë script was used to spell the Sanskrit language, and many Sanskrit copper plate inscriptions of the Vijayanagar Empire were written in that script.
Numerous Sanskrit manuscripts written in NandinÃÂgarë have been discovered in South India, but it is one of the least documented and studied ancient scripts of India. These cover Vedas, philosophy, commentaries on ancient works, mythology, science and arts. These are preserved in the manuscript libraries, particularly those in the southern regions of the country. Some NandinÃÂgarë texts are in biscript that include other major south India language scripts, such as Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada scripts.
NandinÃÂgarë and DevanÃÂgarë scripts are very close and share many similarities, but they also show systematic differences. NandinÃÂgarë differs from DevanÃÂgarë more in the shape of its vowels, and less in many consonant shapes. It has an overline at the top of each character but does not conjoin them across whole words as one long, connected, horizontal line (). NandinÃÂgarë is thus a sister script of DevanÃÂgarë, but not a trivial variation.
The NandinÃÂgarë manuscripts also show cosmetic and style differences, such as the use of distinct Anusvaras and method of labeling each hymn or verse.
NandinÃÂgarë script was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2019 with the release of version 12.0.
The Unicode block for NandinÃÂgarë is U+119A0âÂÂU+119FF: