The (, ) is an
Abugida writing system of the
Brahmic Family of scripts, developed from ca. the
8th Century . It is closely related to and predates
Devanagari , although it shared greater genetic affinity to
Gurmukhi . Originally more widespread, its use became later restricted to
Kashmir , and it is now rarely used except by the
Kashmiri Pandit community for ceremonial purposes. The name ''śāradā'' is derived from a
Sanskrit term meaning "
Autumn al".
An effort is underway to develop the Sharada script for use in digital media by encoding the script in the
Unicode standard, for which a proposalPandey, Anshuman. 2005.
Request to Allocate the Sharada Script in the Unicode Roadmap to allocate the script in the Unicode Roadmap has been submitted as the first step.
