Siddhaṃ script

Siddhaṃ
The word Siddhaṃ in the Siddhaṃ script
Type	Abugida
Languages	Sanskrit
Time period	c. 600–c. 1200 in India, and to the present in East Asia
Parent systems	Aramaic alphabet Brahmi script Gupta Siddhaṃ
Child systems	Assamese alphabet Bengali alphabet Tibetan alphabet
Sister systems	Nāgarī Śāradā
ISO 15924	Sidd, 302
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Siddham
Unicode range	U+11580–U+115FF Final Accepted Script Proposal Variant Forms

Siddhaṃ, also known in its later evolved form as Siddhamātṛkā,^[1] is the name of a script used for writing Sanskrit from ca 600-1200. It is descended from the Brahmi script via the Gupta script, which gave rise to Tirhuta, the Assamese alphabet, the Bengali alphabet and the Tibetan alphabet. There is some confusion over the spelling: Siddhāṃ and Siddhaṃ both common, though Siddhaṃ is preferred correct.^[2] The script is a refinement of the script used during the Gupta Empire. The name arose from the practice of writing the word Siddhaṃ, or Siddhaṃ astu (may there be perfection) at the head of documents.

The word Siddhaṃ means "accomplished" or "perfected" in Sanskrit. Other names for the script include bonji (Japanese: 梵字) and Chinese: 悉曇文字; pinyin: Xītán wénzi.

Siddhaṃ is an abugida 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, anusvara, and visarga. A virama can be used to indicate that the letter stands alone with no vowel, which sometimes happens at the end of Sanskrit words.

History

Siddhaṃ manuscript of the Heart Sutra. Bibliothèque nationale de France

An early Siddham manuscript, dated to the first half of the 6th century (the so-called "Horiuzi Palm-leaf MSS" preserved in Hōryū-ji, Japan). It contains the Sanskrit text of the Heart Sutra and the Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī Sūtra. The final line is a Siddhaṃ alphasyllabary.

Chinese use of the Siddhaṃ script for the Pratisara mantra, from the Later Tang. 927 CE

Chinese use of the Siddhaṃ script for the Mahāpratyaṅgirā mantra. 971 CE

Many Buddhist texts taken to China along the Silk Road were written using a version of the Siddhaṃ script. This continued to evolve, and minor variations are seen across time, and in different regions. Importantly it was used for transmitting the Buddhist tantra texts. At the time it was considered important to preserve the pronunciation of mantras, and Chinese was not suitable for writing the sounds of Sanskrit. This led to the retention of the Siddhaṃ script in East Asia. The practice of writing using Siddhaṃ survived in East Asia where Tantric Buddhism persisted.

Kūkai introduced the Siddhaṃ script to Japan when he returned from China in 806, where he studied Sanskrit with Nalanda-trained monks including one known as Prajñā (Chinese: 般若三藏; pinyin: Bōrě Sāncáng, 734–c. 810). By the time Kūkai learned this script, the trading and pilgrimage routes over land to India, were closed by the expanding Abbasid Caliphate.

In Japan the writing of mantras and copying of Sutras using the Siddhaṃ script is still practiced in the esoteric schools of Shingon Buddhism and Tendai as well as in the syncretic sect of Shugendō. The characters are known as shittan (悉曇) or bonji (梵字, Chinese: Fànzì). The Taishō Tripiṭaka version of the Chinese Buddhist canon preserves the Siddhaṃ characters for most mantras and Korean Buddhists still write bījas in a modified form of Siddhaṃ. A recent innovation is the writing of Japanese language slogans on T-shirts using Bonji. Japanese Siddhaṃ has evolved from the original script used to write sūtras and is now somewhat different from the ancient script.

It is typical to see Siddhaṃ written with brushes like Chinese writing, and it is also written with a bamboo pen; in Japan, a special brush called a bokuhitsu (朴筆, Chinese: pǔbǐ) is used for formal Siddhaṃ calligraphy. The informal style is known as "fude" (筆, Chinese: "máobĭ").

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, while in Bengal, Siddhaṃ evolved to become the Bengali alphabet, leaving East Asia as the only region where Siddhaṃ is used.

There were special forms of Siddham used in Korea that varied significantly from those used in China and Japan, and there is evidence that Siddham was written in Central Asia as well by the early 7th century.

As was done with Chinese characters, Japanese Buddhist scholars sometimes created multiple characters with the same phonological value to add meaning to Siddham characters. This practice, in effect, represents a 'blend' of the Chinese style of writing and the Indian style of writing and allows Sanskrit texts in Siddham to be differentially interpreted as they are read, as was done with Chinese characters that the Japanese had adopted. This led to multiple variants of the same characters.^[3]

With regards to directionality, Siddham texts were usually read from left-to-right then top-to-bottom, as with Indic languages, but occasionally they were written in the traditional Chinese style, from top-to-bottom then right-to-left. Bilingual Siddham-Japanese texts show the manuscript turned 90 degrees clockwise and the Japanese is written from top-to-bottom, as is typical of Japanese, and then the manuscript is turned back again, and the Siddham writing is continued from left-to-right (the resulting Japanese characters look sideways).

Over time, additional markings were developed, including punctuation marks, head marks, repetition marks, end marks, special ligatures to combine conjuncts and rarely to combine syllables, and several ornaments of the scribe's choice, which are not currently encoded. The nuqta is also used in some modern Siddham texts.

Alphabet

Vowels

Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with	Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with
	a			ā
	i			ī
	u			ū
	e			ai
	o			au
	aṃ			aḥ

Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with	Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with
	ṛ			ṝ
	ḷ			ḹ

Alternative forms

ā

i

i

ī

ī

u

ū

o

au

aṃ

Consonants

	Stop					Approximant	Fricative
	Tenuis	Aspirated	Voiced	Breathy voiced	Nasal
Glottal							h
Velar	k	kh	g	gh	ṅ
Palatal	c	ch	j	jh	ñ	y	ś
Retroflex	ṭ	ṭh	ḍ	ḍh	ṇ	r	ṣ
Dental	t	th	d	dh	n	l	s
Bilabial	p	ph	b	bh	m
Labiodental						v

Conjuncts in alphabet

kṣ

llaṃ

Alternative forms

ch

j

ñ

ṭ

ṭh

ḍh

ḍh

ṇ

ṇ

th

th

dh

n

m

ś

ś

v

Conjuncts

Siddhaṃ alphabet by Kūkai (774–835)

k\cdotskṣ	-ya	-ra	-la	-va	-ma	-na
k	kya	kra	kla	kva	kma	kna
rk	rkya	rkra	rkla	rkva	rkma	rkna
kh	\cdots
\vdots     total 68 rows.

• ↑ The combinations that contain adjoining duplicate letters should be deleted in this table。

ṅka	ṅkha	ṅga	ṅgha
ñca	ñcha	ñja	ñjha
ṇṭa	ṇṭha	ṇḍa	ṇḍha
nta	ntha	nda	ndha
mpa	mpha	mba	mbha

ṅya	ṅra	ṅla	ṅva
ṅśa	ṅṣa	ṅsa	ṅha	ṅkṣa

ska	skha	dga	dgha	ṅktra
vca/bca	vcha/bcha	vja/bja	vjha/bjha	jña
ṣṭa	ṣṭha	dḍa	dḍha	ṣṇa
sta	stha	vda/bda	vdha/bdha	rtsna
spa	spha	dba	dbha	rkṣma

rkṣvya	rkṣvrya	lta	tkva
ṭśa	ṭṣa	sha	bkṣa

pta

ṭka

dsva

ṭṣchra

jja

ṭṭa

ṇṇa

tta

nna

mma

lla

vva

\cdots

Alternative forms of conjuncts that contain ṇ.

ṇṭa

ṇṭha

ṇḍa

ṇḍha

ṛ syllables

kṛ

khṛ

gṛ

ghṛ

ṅṛ

cṛ

chṛ

jṛ

jhṛ

ñṛ

\cdots

Some sample syllables

rka	rkā	rki	rkī	rku	rkū	rke	rkai	rko	rkau	rkaṃ	rkaḥ
ṅka	ṅkā	ṅki	ṅkī	ṅku	ṅkū	ṅke	ṅkai	ṅko	ṅkau	ṅkaṃ	ṅkaḥ

Siddhaṃ Fonts

Siddhaṃ is still largely a hand written script. Some efforts have been made to create computer fonts though to date none of these are capable of reproducing all of the Siddhaṃ conjunct consonants. Notably the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association have created a Siddhaṃ font for their electronic version of the Taisho Tripiṭaka, though this does not contain all possible conjuncts. The software Mojikyo also contains fonts for Siddham, but split Siddham in different blocks and needs different fonts to render one document.

A siddhaṃ input system relies on the CBETA font, Siddhamkey 3.0 has been produced.

Unicode

Siddham script was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

The Unicode block for Siddham is U+11580–U+115FF:

Notes

External links

• Muktamsiddham — Free Unicode Siddham font
• Siddham alphabet on Omniglot
• Examples of Siddham mantras Chinese language website.
• Visible Mantra an extensive collection of mantras and some sūtras in Siddhaṃ script
• Bonji Siddham Character and Pronunciation
• SiddhamKey Software for inputting Siddham characters

Sources

• Bonji Taikan (梵字大鑑). (Tōkyō: Meicho Fukyūkai, 1983)
• Chaudhuri, Saroj Kumar (1998). Siddham in China and Japan, Sino-Platonic papers No. 88
• Stevens, John. Sacred Calligraphy of the East. (Boston: Shambala, 1995).
• Van Gulik, R.H. Siddham : An Essay on the History of Sanskrit Studies in China and Japan (New Delhi, Jayyed Press, 1981).
• Yamasaki, Taikō. Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. (Fresno: Shingon Buddhist International Institute, 1988).