KAITHI SCRIPT

The Kaithi script has been used predominantly in North Indian states and Nepal since the 16th century until the early 1900s. 

 

 Its use was generally discouraged under British rule in India. Documents in Kaithi are still traceable as it was used in government offices of Bihar till in early 1900s. This is a lost script now and it is very difficult to find people who know Kaithi.

Kaithi writing resembles Devanagari. Many letters closely resemble devanagari in shape but its cursive style is distinctive. Kaithi is also called the cursive form of Devanagari because of its cursive feature. Another major difference is that, it is generally written without headstroke but with serifs. Both Kaithi and Devanagari are the Gupta branch of Brahmi script.

Another theory says that, Kaithi script derives its name from the word Kayastha. The Kayastha community was closely associated with princely courts and colonial governments of North India. They were traditionally administrators and accountants and employed to write and maintain records of legal documents and revenue transactions.

There are thirty-five consonant letters and either eight or ten vowel letters in Kaithi. The collation orders of letters are based on articulatory phonetics like Devanagari script. The punctuation marks danda and double danda are used for marking pauses in the text, and are sometimes written with serifs. The symbols anusvara and visarga are used as in other Indic scripts. Candrabindu is used more rarely. It employs a set of digits from 0-9, many of which closely resemble their Devanagari equivalents.

 Transformation Story_The Lost Script Kaithi