The Kharosthi alphabet was invented sometime during the 3rd century BC and was possibly derived from the Aramaic alphabet. It was widely used in northwest India and central Asia until the 4th century AD. Unlike the Brahmi script, which was invented at around the same time and spawned many of the modern scripts of India and South East Asia, Kharosthi had no descendants. It is used to write Gandhari and Sanskrit


Notable features

Kharosthi is a syllabic alphabet - each letter has an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels are indicated using diacritics.