The Brahmi writing system ancestral to all Indian scripts except Kharosthi. Of Aramaic derivation or inspiration, it can be traced to the 8th or 7th century BC, when it may have been introduced to Indian merchants by people of Semitic origin. Brahmi is semialphabetic, each consonant having either an inherent a sound pronounced after it or a diacritic mark to show another vowel; initial vowels have separate characters. In most cases Brahmi and its derivatives are written from left to right, but a coin of the 4th century BC, discovered in Madhya Pradesh, is inscribed with Brahmi characters running from right to left. Among the many descendants of Brahmi are Devanagari (used for Sanskrit, Hindi, and other Indian languages), the Bengali and Gujarati scripts, and those of the Dravidian languages.

Brahmi Script appeared in India by the 5th century BCE, but the fact that just like the Greek alphabet, it has many local variants, which suggests that its origin lies further back in time. It is in this script that the great Indian king Asoka inscribed his laws onto monumental columns.

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