Devanagari in the context of Scriptural canon

The history of writing traces the development of writing systems and how their use transformed and was transformed by different societies. The use of writing – as well as the resulting phenomena of literacy and literary culture in some historical instances – has had myriad social and psychological consequences.

Each historical invention of writing emerged from systems of proto-writing that used ideographic and mnemonic symbols but were not capable of fully recording spoken language. True writing, where the content of linguistic utterances can be accurately reconstructed by later readers, is a later development. As proto-writing is not capable of fully reflecting the grammar and lexicon used in languages, it is often only capable of encoding broad or imprecise information.

Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They often feature a compilation or discussion of beliefs, ritual practices, moral commandments and laws, ethical conduct, spiritual aspirations, and admonitions for fostering a religious community.

Within each religion, these texts are revered as authoritative sources of guidance, wisdom, and divine revelation. They are often regarded as sacred or holy, representing the core teachings and principles that their followers strive to uphold.

Abhijnanashakuntalam (Devanagari: अभिज्ञानशाकुन्तलम्, IAST: Abhijñānaśākuntalam), also known as Shakuntala, The Recognition of Shakuntala, The Sign of Shakuntala, and many other variants, is a Sanskrit play by the ancient Indian poet Kālidāsa, dramatizing the story of Śakuntalā told in the epic Mahābhārata and regarded as the best of Kālidāsa's works. Its exact date is uncertain, but Kālidāsa is often placed in the 4th century CE.

The Bhujimol script (or Bhujinmol, Devanagari: भुजिमोल or भुजिंमोल) is the most ancient form of Nepal script. It is also one of the most common varieties of the Nepal alphabet.

The Bhujimol script has been used to write Nepal Bhasa and Sanskrit.

A unicase or unicameral alphabet is a writing script that has no separate cases for its letters. Semitic abjads such as Hebrew and Arabic, Brahmic scripts such as Devanagari, Tamil and Thai, Chinese characters, Hangul and the Iberian and Georgian scripts are unicase writing systems, while scripts like Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian are bicameral, as they have two cases for each letter, e.g. B and b, Б and б, Β and β, or Բ and բ. Individual characters can also be called unicameral if they are used as letters with a generally bicameral alphabet but have only one form for both cases; for example, the ʻokina as used in Polynesian languages and the glottal stop as used in Nuu-chah-nulth are unicameral.

Most modern writing systems originated as unicase orthographies. The Latin script originally had only majuscule forms directly derived from the Greek alphabet, which were originally viable for being chiseled into stone. At the same time, everyday writing was carried out in a cursive variant of the block capitals, which during the Middle Ages evolved into new letterforms for use in running text that were more legible and faster to write with an ink pen, such as Carolingian minuscule. Originally, use of the two forms was mutually exclusive, but it became a common compromise to use both in tandem, which ultimately had additional benefits in areas such as legibility. The later minuscule became the "lowercase" forms, while the original majuscule became the "uppercase" forms.

Sanātana Dharma (Devanagari: सनातन धर्म, meaning "eternal dharma", or "eternal order") or Sanatanism is an alternative term for Hinduism, primarily used as an endonym (native name) to the exonym (foreign name) of Hinduism. The term is found in Sanskrit and other Indian languages.

The term denotes the "eternal" or absolute set of duties or religiously ordained practices incumbent upon all Hindus, regardless of class, caste, or sect. Many Hindus in the Indian subcontinent call themselves Sanatanis, that is, those who follow the 'eternal dharma', to evoke a certain homogeneity in Hinduism. Its use to signify Hinduism as a religion was popularised since the 19th century by champions of Hindu orthodoxy such as Pandit Shraddha Ram in reaction to missionaries and Hindu reformers such as Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj. Aside from its use in socio-religious contexts, it also sustains a political necessity for many Hindus.

Śruti or shruti (Sanskrit: श्रुति, IAST: Śruti, IPA: [ɕruti]) in Sanskrit means "that which is heard" and refers to the body of most authoritative, ancient religious texts comprising the central canon of Hinduism. Manusmriti states: Śrutistu vedo vijñeyaḥ (Devanagari: श्रुतिस्तु वेदो विज्ञेयः) meaning, "Know that Vedas are Śruti". Thus, it includes the four Vedas including its four types of embedded texts—the Samhitas, the Upanishads, the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas.

Śrutis has been variously described as a revelation through anubhava (direct experience), or of primordial origins realized by ancient Rishis. In Hindu tradition, they have been referred to as apauruṣeya (not created by humans). The Śruti texts themselves assert that they were skillfully created by Rishis (sages), after inspired creativity, just as a carpenter builds a chariot.

The Agamas (Devanagari: आगम, IAST: āgama) are a collection of several Tantric literature and scriptures of Hindu schools. The term literally means tradition or "that which has come down", and the Agama texts describe cosmology, epistemology, philosophical doctrines, precepts on meditation and practices, four kinds of yoga, mantras, temple construction, deity worship and ways to attain sixfold desires. These canonical texts are in Sanskrit and Tamil.

The three main branches of Agama texts are Shaiva, Vaishnava and Shakta. The Agamic traditions are sometimes called Tantrism, although the term "Tantra" is usually used specifically to refer to Shakta Agamas. The Agama literature is voluminous, and includes 28 Shaiva Agamas, 64 Shakta Agamas (also called Tantras), and 108 Vaishnava Agamas (also called Pancharatra Samhitas), and numerous Upa-Agamas.

Saṃsāra (Devanagari: संसार) is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" as well as "world," wherein the term connotes "cyclic change" or, less formally, "running around in circles." Saṃsāra is referred to with terms or phrases such as transmigration/reincarnation, karmic cycle, or Punarjanman, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence". When related to the theory of karma, it is the cycle of death and rebirth.

The "cyclicity of all life, matter, and existence" is a fundamental belief of most Indian religions. The concept of saṃsāra has roots in the post-Vedic literature; the theory is not discussed in the Vedas themselves. It appears in developed form, but without mechanistic details, in the early Upanishads. The full exposition of the saṃsāra doctrine is found in early Buddhism and Jainism, as well as in various schools of Hindu philosophy. The saṃsāra doctrine is tied to the karma theory of Hinduism, and the liberation from saṃsāra has been at the core of the spiritual quest of Indian traditions, as well as their internal disagreements. The liberation from saṃsāra is called Moksha, Nirvāṇa, Mukti, or Kaivalya.

Shakti (Devanagari: शक्ति, IAST: Śakti; lit. 'energy, ability, strength, effort, power, might, capability') in Hinduism, is the "Universal Power" that underlies and sustains all existence. Conceived as feminine in essence, Shakti as devi refers to the personified energy or power of a male deity, often personified as the complementary force of the given Hindu god.

In Tantric Shaktism, Shakti is the foremost deity, akin to Brahman. In Puranic Hinduism, Shiva and Shakti are the masculine and feminine principles that are complementary to each other. The female deity is prakriti, the active, dynamic and creative principle. The male deity is purusha, the passive, unchanging and observing principle. The interaction of both principles is what creates the universe.

Maya (/ˈmɑːjə/; Devanagari: माया; IPA: [mɑː.jɑ́ː]; IAST: māyā), literally "illusion" or "magic", has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In later Vedic texts, māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem"; the principle which shows "attributeless Absolute" as having "attributes". Māyā also connotes that which "is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal" (in opposition to an unchanging Absolute, or Brahman), and therefore "conceals the true character of spiritual reality".

In the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, māyā, "appearance", is "the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real". In this nondualist school, māyā at the individual level appears as the lack of knowledge (avidyā) of the real Self, Atman-Brahman, mistakenly identifying with the body-mind complex and its entanglements.

In sociolinguistics, digraphia refers to the use of more than one writing system for the same language. Synchronic digraphia is the coexistence of two or more writing systems for the same language, while diachronic digraphia or sequential digraphia is the replacement of one writing system by another for a particular language.

Hindustani, with an Urdu literary standard written in Urdu alphabet and a Hindi standard written in Devanagari, is one of the "textbook examples" of synchronic digraphia, cases where writing systems are used contemporaneously. An example of diachronic digraphia, where one writing system replaces another, occurs in the case of Turkish, for which the traditional Arabic writing system was replaced with a Latin-based system in 1928.

Namaste (Sanskrit pronunciation: [nɐmɐsteː], Devanagari: नमस्ते), sometimes called namaskār and namaskāram, is a customary Hindu manner of respectfully greeting and honouring a person or group, used at any time of day. It is used worldwide among the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. Namaste is usually spoken with a slight bow and hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointing upwards, thumbs close to the chest. This gesture is called añjali mudrā; the standing posture incorporating it is pranāmāsana.

Sindhi (سِنڌِي‎, Sindhī, [sɪndʱiː]) is an Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken by the Sindhi people native to the Pakistani province of Sindh, where the language has official status. It constitutes the mother tongue of over 34 million people in Pakistan, primarily concentrated in Sindh; with historic communities in neighbouring Balochistan as well. It is also spoken by 1.7 million people in India, mostly by the descendants of partition-era migrants; with it having the status of a scheduled language in the country without any state-level official status. Sindhi is written in the Sindhi alphabet of the Perso-Arabic script, the sole official script for the language in Pakistan; while in India, both the Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts are used.

With over 37 million native speakers, Sindhi is a major South Asian language, being the most-widely spoken language in southern Pakistan and third most-widely spoken in the entirety of Pakistan (after Punjabi and Pashto). The language is also geographically spread out of South Asia as it is spoken by the Sindhi diaspora, present around the world, primarily in the Gulf states, the Western world and the Far East.

Hindi–Urdu (Devanagari: हिन्दी-उर्दू, Nastaliq: ہندی-اردو) (also known as Hindustani) is the lingua franca of modern-day Northern India and Pakistan (together classically known as Hindustan). Modern Standard Hindi is officially registered in India as a standard written using the Devanagari script, and Standard Urdu is officially registered in Pakistan as a standard written using an extended Perso-Arabic script.

Hindi–Urdu transliteration (or Hindustani transliteration) is the process of converting text written in Devanagari script (used for Hindi) into Perso-Arabic script (used for Urdu), or vice versa. It focuses on representing the shared phonemes between those writing systems or using other writing systems, primarily Latin alphabet, in their stead. Transliteration is theoretically possible because of the common Hindustani phonology underlying Hindi-Urdu. In the present day, the Hindustani language is seen as a unifying language, as initially proposed by Mahatma Gandhi to resolve the Hindi–Urdu controversy.

The Tamang people (རྟ་དམག་; Devanagari: तामाङ; tāmāṅ) are an ethnic group living in Nepal, Northeast India and southern Bhutan. In Nepal, they are concentrated in the central hilly and Himalayan regions and constituted over 1.6 million people in the 2021 census. In India, Tamang people live in the state of Sikkim, in the Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal and in Assam. In Bhutan, they live foremost in the southern foothills including Tsirang District, Dagana District, Samtse District, Chukha District, Sarpang District and Samdrup Jongkhar District. The Tamang language is the fifth most-spoken language in Nepal.