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Siddha?
The word Siddha? in the Siddha? script
Type	Abugida
Languages	Sanskrit
Time period	c. late 6th century[1] – c. 1200 CE [2]
Parent systems	Aramaic alphabet[a] Brahmi script Gupta Siddha?
Child systems	Bengali-Assamese script Assamese alphabet Bengali alphabet Tirhuta alphabet Tibetan script
Sister systems	N?gar? rad?
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Sidd, 302
Unicode alias	Siddham
Unicode range	U+11580–U+115FF Final Accepted Script Proposal Variant Forms
^ The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.

Siddha? (also Siddh^[3]), also known in its later evolved form as Siddham?t?k?,^[4] is a medieval Brahmic abugida, derived from the Gupta script and ancestral to the Assamese alphabets, Bengali alphabet, Maithili alphabet^[5], and the Tibetan alphabet.

The word Siddha? means "accomplished" or "perfected" in Sanskrit. The script received its name from the practice of writing Siddha?, or Siddha? astu (may there be perfection), at the head of documents. Other names for the script include bonji (Japanese: ) lit. "Brahma's characters" and "Sanskrit script" and Chinese: ?; pinyin: X?tán wénzi lit. "Siddha? script".

Siddha? is an abugida rather than an alphabet, as each character indicates a syllable, including a consonant and (possibly) a vowel. If the vowel sound is not explicitly indicated, the short 'a' is assumed. Diacritic marks are used to indicate other vowels, as well as the anusvara and visarga. A virama can be used to indicate that the consonant letter stands alone with no vowel, which sometimes happens at the end of Sanskrit words.

History

Siddha? manuscript of the Heart Sutra. Bibliothèque nationale de France

A reproduction of the palm-leaf manuscript in Siddham script, originally held at H?ry?-ji Temple, Japan; now located in the Tokyo National Museum at the Gallery of H?ry?--ji Treasure. The original copy may be the earliest extant Sanskrit manuscript of the Heart Sutra dated to the 7th-8th century CE. It also contains the Sanskrit text of the U?a Vijaya Dh?ra S?tra and the final line shows the Siddha? abugida.^[6]

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

Chinese use of the Siddha? script for the Mah?pratya?gir? mantra. 971 CE

Siddha? Bijakshara A, Daish?-in, Miyajima

Mirror with bijaksharas, Miyajima

The Siddham script evolved from the Gupta Brahmi script in the late 6th century CE.^[1]

Many Buddhist texts taken to China along the Silk Road were written using a version of the Siddha? 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 Siddha? script in East Asia. The practice of writing using Siddha? survived in East Asia where Tantric Buddhism persisted.

K?kai introduced the Siddha? script to Japan when he returned from China in 806, where he studied Sanskrit with Nalanda-trained monks including one known as Prajñ? (Chinese: ?; pinyin: B?r? S?ncáng, 734-c. 810). By the time K?kai learned this script, the trading and pilgrimage routes over land to India had been closed by the expanding Abbasid Caliphate.^[7]

In Japan, the writing of mantras and copying/reading of sutras using the Siddha? script is still practiced in the esoteric schools of Shingon Buddhism and Tendai as well as in the syncretic sect of Shugend?. The characters are known as shittan () or bonji (, Chinese: Fànzì). The Taish? Tripi?aka version of the Chinese Buddhist canon preserves the Siddha? characters for most mantras, and Korean Buddhists still write b?jas in a modified form of Siddha?. A recent innovation is the writing of Japanese language slogans on T-shirts using Bonji. Japanese Siddha? has evolved from the original script used to write s?tras and is now somewhat different from the ancient script.^[8][9][10]

It is typical to see Siddha? written with a brush, as with Chinese writing; it is also written with a bamboo pen. In Japan, a special brush called a bokuhitsu (, Cantonese: pokbat) is used for formal Siddha? calligraphy. The informal style is known as "fude" (?, Cantonese: "moubat").

In the middle of the 9th century, China experienced a series of purges of "foreign religions", thus cutting Japan off from the sources of Siddha? texts. In time, other scripts, particularly Devanagari, replaced Siddha? in India, while in Eastern South Asia (including Assam, Bengal, Bihar etc), Siddha? evolved to become the Bengali script, Tirhuta script and Anga script, leaving East Asia as the only region where Siddha? is still used.

There were special forms of Siddha? used in Korea that varied significantly from those used in China and Japan, and there is evidence that Siddha? 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 Siddha? 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 Siddha? 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.^[11]

With regards to directionality, Siddha? 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 Siddha?-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 Siddha? 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 Siddha? texts.

The script

Vowels

Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with	Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with
	a			?
	i			?
	u			?
	e			ai
	o			au
	a?			a?

Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with	Independent form	Romanized	As diacritic with
	?			?
	?			?

Alternative forms

?

i

i

?

?

u

?

o

au

a?

Consonants

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

Conjuncts in alphabet

k?

lla?

Alternative forms

ch

j

ñ

?

?h

?h

?h

?

?

th

th

dh

n

m

?

?

v

Conjuncts

Siddha? alphabet by K?kai (774-835)

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

• ? The combinations that contain adjoining duplicate letters should be deleted in this table.

?ka	?kha	?ga	?gha
ñca	ñcha	ñja	ñjha
a	ha	a	ha
nta	ntha	nda	ndha
mpa	mpha	mba	mbha

?ya	?ra	?la	?va
a	a	?sa	?ha	?k?a

ska	skha	dga	dgha	?ktra
vca/bca	vcha/bcha	vja/bja	vjha/bjha	jña
a	ha	d?a	d?ha	a
sta	stha	vda/bda	vdha/bdha	rtsna
spa	spha	dba	dbha	rk?ma

rk?vya	rk?vrya	lta	tkva
a	a	sha	bk?a

pta

?ka

dsva

chra

jja

a

a

tta

nna

mma

lla

vva

${\displaystyle \cdots }$

Alternative forms of conjuncts that contain ?.

a

ha

a

ha

? syllables

k?

kh?

g?

gh?

c?

ch?

j?

jh?

ñ?

${\displaystyle \cdots }$

Some sample syllables

rka	rk?	rki	rk?	rku	rk?	rke	rkai	rko	rkau	rka?	rka?
?ka	?k?	?ki	?k?	?ku	?k?	?ke	?kai	?ko	?kau	?ka?	?ka?

Siddha? fonts

Siddha? 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 Siddha? conjunct consonants. Notably, the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association has created a Siddha? font for their electronic version of the Taisho Tripi?aka, though this does not contain all possible conjuncts. The software Mojikyo also contains fonts for Siddha?, but split Siddha? in different blocks and requires multiple fonts to render a single document.

A Siddha? input system which relies on the CBETA font Siddhamkey 3.0 has been produced.

Unicode

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

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

Notes

Sources

• Bonji Taikan (?). (T?ky?: Meicho Fuky?kai, 1983)
• Chaudhuri, Saroj Kumar (1998). Siddham in China and Japan, Sino-Platonic papers No. 88
• e-Museum, National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties of National Museums, Japan (2018), "Sanskrit Version of Heart Sutra and Viyaya Dharani", e-Museum
• 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, Taik?. Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. (Fresno: Shingon Buddhist International Institute, 1988.)

External links

• Muktamsiddham--Free Unicode Siddham font (pre Unicode 7.0, mapped to Devanagari codepoints)
• ApDevaSiddham--(Japanese) Free Unicode 8.0 Siddham Font (mirror)
• Siddham alphabet on Omniglot
• Examples of Siddham mantras Chinese language website.
• Visible Mantra an extensive collection of mantras and some s?tras in Siddha? script
• Bonji Siddham Character and Pronunciation
• SiddhamKey Software for inputting Siddham characters