• Images
• Videos
• Documents
• Books
• Articles

History

The Siddham script evolved from the Gupta Brahmi script in the late 6th century CE.⁵

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

Kūkai introduced the Siddhaṃ script to Japan when he returned from China in 806, where he studied Sanskrit with Nalanda-trained monks including one known as Prajñā (Chinese: 般若三藏; pinyin: Bōrě Sāncáng; 734–c. 810). By the time Kūkai learned this script, the trading and pilgrimage routes over land to India had been closed by the expanding Abbasid Caliphate.⁶

In the middle of the 9th century, China experienced a series of purges of "foreign religions", thus cutting Japan off from the sources of Siddhaṃ texts. In time, other scripts, particularly Devanagari, replaced Siddhaṃ in India, while Siddhaṃ's northeastern derivative called Gaudi evolved to become the Eastern Nagari, Tirhuta, Odia and also the Nepalese scripts in the eastern and northeastern regions of South Asia,⁷⁸ leaving East Asia as the only region where Siddhaṃ is still used.

There were special forms of Siddhaṃ used in Korea that varied significantly from those used in China and Japan, and there is evidence that Siddhaṃ 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 Siddhaṃ 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 Siddhaṃ 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.⁹

Characteristics

Siddhaṃ 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.

Siddhaṃ texts were usually written from left to right then top to bottom, as with other Brahmic scripts, but occasionally they were written in the traditional Chinese style, from top to bottom then right to left. Bilingual Siddhaṃ-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 Siddhaṃ writing is continued from left to right (the resulting Japanese characters appear 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 Siddhaṃ texts.

Vowels

Consonants

Conjuncts

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

ṛ syllables

Some sample syllables

Usage

In Japan, the writing of mantras and copying/reading of sutras using the Siddhaṃ script is still practiced in the esoteric schools of Shingon Buddhism and Tendai as well as in the syncretic sect of Shugendō. The characters are known as Bonji (梵字, Chinese: Fànzì) or shittan (悉曇). The Taishō Tripiṭaka version of the Chinese Buddhist canon preserves the Siddhaṃ characters for most mantras, and Korean Buddhists still write bījas in a modified form of Siddhaṃ. A recent innovation is the writing of Japanese language slogans on T-shirts using Bonji. Japanese Siddhaṃ has evolved from the original script used to write sūtras and is now somewhat different from the ancient script.¹⁰¹¹¹²

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

Siddhaṃ fonts

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

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

Unicode

Main article: Siddham (Unicode block)

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

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

Gallery

This is a gallery of example usages of the Siddham script.

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Bonji Taikan (梵字大鑑). (Tōkyō: Meicho Fukyūkai, 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 (2025), "Sanskrit Version of Heart Sutra and Viyaya Dharani", e-Museum{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Stevens, John. Sacred Calligraphy of the East. (Boston, MA: 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, Taikō. Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. (Fresno: Shingon Buddhist International Institute, 1988.)
• Chandra, Lokesh (1965) Sanskrit bījas and mantras in Japan, New Delhi , International Academy of Indian Culture, BQ5125.B5 A75 1965

External links

• Fonts:
  • Noto Sans Siddham from the Noto fonts project
  • Muktamsiddham—Free Unicode Siddham font
  • 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 sūtras in Siddhaṃ script
• Bonji Siddham Character and Pronunciation
• SiddhamKey Software for inputting Siddham characters

References

1. "Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary 1899 Basic". www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de. Retrieved 2023-05-24. https://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/2020/web/webtc/indexcaller.php ↩

2. "Devanagari: Development, Amplification, and Standardisation". Central Hindi Directorate, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, Govt. of India. 3 April 1977. Retrieved 3 April 2018 – via Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=S_4QAAAAMAAJ&q=siddham+script+maithili ↩

3. Rajan, Vinodh; Sharma, Shriramana (2012-06-28). "L2/12-221: Comments on naming the "Siddham" encoding" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-08-19. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12221-siddham-naming.pdf ↩

4. Chaudhuri, Saroj Kumar. Sanskrit in China and Japan. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 2011. ↩

5. Singh, Upinder (2008). A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. Delhi: Pearson. p. 43. ISBN 9788131716779. 9788131716779 ↩

6. Pandey, Anshuman (2012-08-01). "N4294: Proposal to Encode the Siddham Script in ISO/IEC 10646" (PDF). Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12234r-n4294-siddham.pdf ↩

7. Salomon, Richard (1998). Indian Epigraphy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-535666-3. 978-0-19-535666-3 ↩

8. Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography, R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine McBride(2019) ↩

9. Kawabata, Taichi; Suzuki, Toshiya; Nagasaki, Kiyonori; Shimoda, Masahiro (2013-06-11). "N4407R: Proposal to Encode Variants for Siddham Script" (PDF). Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13110r-n4407.pdf ↩

10. SM Dine, 2012, Sanskrit Beyond Text: The Use of Bonji (Siddham) in Mandala and Other Imagery in Ancient and Medieval Japan, University of Washington. https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/20584/Dine_washington_0250O_10572.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y ↩

11. Siddhaṃ : the perfect script. http://www.visiblemantra.org/siddham.html ↩

12. Buddhism guide: Shingon. http://buddhism-guide.com/buddhism/shingon.htm ↩