Siddham (Sanskrit, accomplished or perfected) — referred to in Japanese as bonji (梵字) — is the name of a North Indian script used for writing Sanskrit. Descended from the Brahmi script via the Gupta script, which also gave rise to the Devanāgarī script as well as a number of other Asian scripts such as Tibetan script. Sanskrit ( संस्कृतम्) is an Indo-European classical language of India and a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. ... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts, attested from the 3rd century BC. The best known and earliest dated inscriptions in Brahmi are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka. ... The Gupta script was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated with the Gupta Empire of India which was a period of material prosperity and great religious and scientific developments. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) DevanāgarÄ« (देवनागरी —, pronounced as , but in English pronounced as ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida writing system used to write, either along with other scripts, or exclusively, several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali... Om Mani Padme Hum, the primary mantra of Tibetan Buddhism written in the Tibetan script, on a rock outside the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. ...

Siddham is an abugida or alphasyllabary rather than an alphabet because each character indicates a syllable. If no other mark occurs then the short 'a' is assumed. Diacritic marks indicate the other vowels, the pure nasal, and the aspirated vowel. A special mark can be used to indicate that the letter stands alone with no vowel which sometimes happens at the end of Sanskrit words. See links below for examples. An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ...

The writing of mantras and copying of Sutras using the Siddham script is still practiced in Shingon Buddhism in Japan but has died out in other places. It was Kūkai who introduced the Siddham script to Japan when he returned from China in 806, where he studied Sanskrit with Nalanda trained monks including one known as Prajñā. Sutras that were taken to China from India were written in a variety of scripts, but Siddham was one of the most important. By the time Kūkai learned this script the trading and pilgrimage routes over land to India, part of the Silk Road, were closed by the expanding Islamic empire of the Abbasids. Then in the middle of the 9th century there were a series of purges of "foreign religions" in China. This meant that Japan was cut off from the sources of Siddham texts. In time other scripts, particularly Devanagari replaced it in India, and so Japan was left as the only place where Siddham was preserved, although it was, and is only used for writing mantras and copying sutras. A mantra is a religious syllable or poem, typically from the Sanskrit language. ... Sutra (सूत्र) in Sanskrit is derived from the verb siv-, meaning to sew (these words, including English to sew and Latinate suture, all derive from PIE *syÅ«-). It literally means a rope or thread, and more metaphorically refers to an aphorism (or line, rule, formula), or a collection of such aphorisms... Located in Kyoto, Japan, Daigoji is the head temple of the Ono branch of Shingon. ... Painting of Kukai (774-835). ... Events April 12 - Nicephorus elected patriarch of Constantinople, succeeding Tarasius. ... Remains at Nalanda Nalanda is a historical place in central Bihar, India, 90 km south-east of the state capital of Patna. ... The Silk Road (Traditional Chinese: 絲綢之路; Simplified Chinese: 丝绸之路; pinyin: sÄ« chóu zhÄ« lù, Persian راه ابریشم Râh-e Abrisham, Turkish: Ä°pekyolu, Kyrgyz: Jibek Jolu,) was an interconnected series of routes through Southern Asia traversed by caravan and ocean vessel, and connecting Changan (todays Xian), China, with Antioch, Asia... Islam (Arabic: ; ( â–¶ (help· info)), the peaceful submission to the will of God) is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions and the worlds second-largest religion. ... Abbasid provinces during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid Abbasid (Arabic: العبّاسيّون AbbāsÄ«yÅ«n) was the dynastic name generally given to the caliphs of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Islamic empire, that overthrew the Umayyad caliphs. ...

Siddham was influential in the development of the Kana writing system, which is also associated with Kūkai — while the Kana shapes derive from Chinese characters, the princlple of a syllable-based script and their systematic ordering was taken over from Siddham. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ...

See also:

• Writing system
• Alphabet
• Mojikyo

A writing system, also called a script, is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... Mojikyo (文字鏡) is a set of computer software and fonts for enhanced ideogram word-processing. ...

External links

• Siddham alphabet
• Examples of Siddham mantras with roman alphabet equivalents
• The Heart Sutra
• Examples of Siddham mantras Chinese language website.
• Scripts and Languages of India
• Bonji Siddham Character&Pronunciation

Sources

• John Stevens. Sacred Calligraphy of the East. (Boston : Shambala, 1995)
• Taikō Yamasaki. Shingon : Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. (Fresno, C.A. : Shingon Buddhist Int. Inst., 1988)