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'Siddhaṃ' (Sanskrit सिद्धं, accomplished or perfected) — 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.
Siddhaṃ is an abugida or alphasyllabary rather than an alphabet because each character indicates a syllable, but it does not include every possible syllable. If no other mark occurs then the short 'a' is assumed. Diacritic marks indicate the other vowels, the pure nasal (anusvāra), and the aspirated vowel (visarga). A special mark (virama) 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.
The writing of mantras and copying of Sutras using the Siddhaṃ script is practiced solely in Japan , where the script is known as ''bonji'' (梵字), in the ''mikkyo'' (密教, esoteric Buddhist) schools of Shingon and Tendai Buddhism as well as in the syncretic sect of Shugendō; its use has died out in other places. Kūkai 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 taken to China from India were written in a variety of scripts, Siddham being 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. In the middle of the 9th century, China experienced a series of purges of "foreign religions", thus cutting Japan off from the sources of Siddhaṃ texts. In time, other scripts, particularly Devanagari, replaced Siddhaṃ in India, and so Japan was left as the only place where Siddhaṃ was preserved, although it was, and continues to be, used mainly for writing mantras and copying sutras. A recent innovation is writing Japanese teeshirt slogans using Bonji.
The software Mojikyo contains fonts for Siddham.

Contents

External links

Sources

External links

★ Siddham alphabet on Omniglot

★ 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 and Pronunciation

★ Bonji Bar Bonji Decoration Bar in Asakusa, Tokyo

★ Siddham/Japanese writing on a teeshirt.

Sources

★ John Stevens. ''Sacred Calligraphy of the East''. (Boston: Shambala, 1995)

★ Taikō Yamasaki. ''Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism''. (Fresno: Shingon Buddhist International Institute, 1988)