page_title: Sylheti Nagri
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Sylheti Nagri / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Sylheti Nagari is an endangered script used for writing Sylheti. This recently built structure namely "Nagari chattar" (Nagari Square) near Surma river in the city of Sylhet, Bangladesh consists of alphabets of this script. বাংলা: সিলেটি ভাষার লিখিত রূপ সিলেটি নাগরি। এই লিপির স্মৃতি ধরে রাখতে সিলেট শহরে সুরমা নদীর কাছে নির্মাণ করা হয়েছে নাগরি চত্বর।
context_page_description: Sylheti Nagri, known in classical manuscripts as Sylhet Nagri, is an endangered writing system of the Brahmic family historically used in the Sylhet region, particularly for the Sylheti language and Bengali language. Manuscripts have also been found in Greater Mymensingh and Northeast India. It has influences from Bengali, Kaithi, Devanagari and Arabic scripts. Literature in the Sylheti Nagri script was mostly common amongst lower class Muslims that lived towards the east of the Sylhet region and has historically been mostly limited to writing puthis and signatures, having no presence in formal documentations. Although in recent times it has lost much ground to the Bengali script, Sylheti Nagri is supposedly beginning to be reintroduced.
context_section_description: The specific origin of Sylheti Nagri is debated. Talib Husan (1549) by Ghulam Husan is the earliest known work. The general hypothesis, in particular among the general folk, is that the Muslims of Sylhet were the ones to invent it for the purpose of mass Islamic education. This is thought to have taken place during the 15th-century, when the Bengali Hindus led by Krishna Chaitanya, started a Sanskrit and Vaishnavist reawakening movement. The script was also used in Kishoreganj, Mymensingh and Netrakona in Bangladesh; and Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam in India.
  On the other hand, according to Ahmad Hasan Dani it was the Afghans living in Sylhet during the Afghan rule who invented the script, since some of Sylheti Nagri's letters resemble the symbols on Afghan coins, and there were a large number of Afghans living in Sylhet at that time. Other less-supported hypotheses are:
  The script was invented by immigrant Bhikkhus from neighbouring countries such as Nepal. ;
  The script could have been invented in the seventeenth—eighteenth century to facilitate the Muslim sepoys coming from the joint state of Bihar and other immigrant Muslims;
caption: This structure, namely "Nagri Chattar" (Nagri Square), built near Surma river in the city of Sylhet, Bangladesh consists of alphabets of this script.
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