|
Several Dhivehi scripts have been used by Maldivians during their history. The early Dhivehi scripts fell into the abugida category, while the more recent Taana has characteristics of both an abugida and a true alphabet. An ancient form of Nagari script, as well as the Arabic and Latin scripts, have also been extensively used in the Maldives, but with a more restricted function. Latin was official only during a very brief period of the Islands' history. The language of the Maldives has had its very own script since very ancient times. It is likely that the first Dhivehi script appeared in association with the expansion of Buddhism throughout South Asia. This was over two millennia ago, in the Mauryan period, during emperor Ashoka's time. Manuscripts used by Maldivian Buddhist monks were probably written in a script that slowly evolved into a characteristic Dhivehi form. None of those ancient documents have survived and the early forms of the Maldive script are only found etched on a few coral rocks and copper plates. ==Ancient scripts (Evēla Akuru)== ''Divehi Akuru'' "island letters" is a script formerly used to write the Dhivehi language. Unlike the modern Thaana script, Divehi Akuru has its origins in the Brahmi script and thus was written from left to right. Divehi Akuru was separated into two variants, a more recent and an ancient one and christened “Dives Akuru” and "Evēla Akuru" respectively by Harry Charles Purvis Bell in the early 20th century. Bell was British and studied Maldivian epigraphy when he retired from the colonial government service in Colombo. Bell wrote a monograph on the Archaeology, history and epigraphy of the Maldives. He was the first modern scholar to study these ancient writings and he undertook an extensive and serious research on the available epigraphy. The division that Bell made based on the differences he perceived between the two types of Dhivehi scripts is convenient for the study of old Dhivehi documents. The Divehi Akuru developed from the Grantha alphabet. The letters on old Inscriptions resemble the southern Grantha of the Pallava dynasty and Chola dynasty periods of South India. However, this does not mean that the Maldives were dependent from those kingdoms, for the Maldive Islands have been an independent nation practically all along their history. There has been very little interference, cultural or otherwise, from other neighboring kingdoms in South India and Sri Lanka. The early form of this script was also called Divehi Akuru by Maldivians, but it was renamed Evēla Akuru "ancient letters" in a tentative manner by H.C.P. Bell in order to distinguish it from the more recent variants of the same script. This name became established and so the most ancient form of the Maldive script is now known as Evēla Akuru. The ancient name of the Evēla Akuru was ''Dīvī Grantha''. This is the script that evolved at the time when the Maldives was an independent kingdom and it was still in use one century after the conversion to Islam. Evēla can be seen in the Lōmāfānu (copper plate grants) of the 12th and 13th centuries and in inscriptions on coral stone (hirigā) dating back from the Maldive Buddhist period. Two of the few copper plate documents that have been preserved are from Haddhunmathi Atoll. The oldest inscription found in the Maldives to date is an inscription on a coral stone found at an archaeological site on Landhū Island in Southern Miladhunmadulu Atoll, where there are important Buddhist archaeological remains including a large stupa. The Landhū inscription is estimated to be from 8th century A.D. Even though long before that time Maldivian Buddhist monks had been writing and reading manuscripts in their language, older documents have not yet been discovered. The reason why even at that time the local script was known as "Divehi Akuru" by Maldivians was because another non-Maldivian script was used in the country. This was a Devanagari script related to the form used by Bengali and it had a ceremonial value. The oldest paleographically-datable inscription found in the Maldives is a Prakrit inscription of Vajrayana Buddhism dating back to the 9th or 10th century AD This inscription is written in an early form of the Nagari script. Thus the name "Divehi Akuru" was used historically by Maldivians to distinguish their own writing system from foreign scripts. Foreign scripts were learned and introduced at that time when Maldivian monks visited the Buddhist learning centers of Nalanda and Vikramashila.〔Xavier Romero-Frias, ''The Maldive Islanders, A Study of the Popular Culture of an Ancient Ocean Kingdom'', Barcelona 1999, ISBN 84-7254-801-5〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Maldivian writing systems」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|