It is NOT an alphabet no Indian script is an alphabet An alphabet is a writing system which conveys a near one to one correspondence between sounds and graphemes This includes the representation of EVERY VOWEL AND EVERY COONSONANT In the Indian scripts consonants are the basic symbols and vowels are written as diacritics and they can be before after above or below the consonant depending on what the vowel is Also there is one vowel a which is inherent and is not written unless it begins a word Also all consonant clusters are written as ligatures which an alphabet does not do This script and every other script from India is what s called an ABUGIDA An abugida is NOT AN ALPHABET You don t have unwritten vowel sounds in an alphabetic system Hebrew and Arabic are not alphabets either they are ABJADS since they normally do not write vowels at all no matter which vowel it is But systems that do write vowels as DIACRITICS NOT independent letters are abugidas Alphabet has a very sctrict definition that pretty much only fits systems such as Latin Greek Cyrillic Korean etc