Sylheti Nagri or Sylheti Nagari (, ISO: , ), known in classical manuscripts as Sylhet Nagri (, Sileṭ Nagri) amongst many other names (see below), was an Indic script of the Brahmic family. The script was historically used in areas of Bengal and Assam that were east of the Padma, primarily in the eastern part of the Sylhet region, to document Muslim religious poetry known as puthis; having no presence in formal documentations. In the course of the 20th century, it has lost much ground to the standardised Eastern Nagari script. Printing presses for Sylheti Nagri existed as late as into the 1970s, and in the 2000s, a Unicode font was created for the script.
Etymology and names
Sylhet Nagri is a compound of "Sylhet" () and "nāgrī" (). Sylhet is the name of the region in which the script was primarily used and originated from. Nagri means "of or pertaining to an abode (nagar)". Hence, Sylhet Nagri denotes from the abode or city of Sylhet. In recent times, it has come to be known as Sylheti Nagri although this name was not used in the classical manuscripts such as Pohela Kitab by Muhammad Abdul Latif. Nagendranath Basu asserts that Nagri is named after the Nagar Brahmins who were known for retaining their Nagri scripts whilst adopting the local language of places which they migrated to.
The script has been known by other names such as Jalalabadi Nagri () after the name of Jalalabad (Sylhet), Phul Nagri (), Jangli Nagri and Kat Nagri, amongst others. Another popular term is Musalmani Nagri () due to its prevalence amongst Muslims of eastern Bengal.
History
Origins
According to Qadir (1999) and Professor Clifford Wright, the script descends from Kaithi script, a script predominantly used in Bihar.
The specific origin of the script is debated. Though most popular in Sylhet, the script was historically also used in Greater Mymensingh, Northeast India and West Bengal. One hypothesis is that the Muslims of Sylhet were the ones to invent it for the purpose of mass Islamic education, which is thought to have taken place during the 15th-century, when Bengali Hindus led by Krishna Chaitanya, started a Sanskrit and Vaishnavist reawakening movement. On the other hand, Ahmad Hasan Dani believes that it was invented by the Afghans during their rule of Bengal, since Nagri letters resemble Afghan coin symbols and the large number of Afghan inhabitants in Sylhet at the time. Another theory dates the script's origin as late as the seventeenth—eighteenth century; claiming that it was invented to facilitate the Muslim sepoys coming from the joint state of Bihar and other immigrant Muslims.
Though almost solely used by Muslims, there are other theories which point the script's origins to Buddhists and Hindus who later converted to Islam. A popular theory is that it was brought to the region via Nagar Brahmins. This is a Hindu caste known for travelling and settling across the subcontinent, adopting the local language but writing in their own Nagari-variant of Kaithi instead. The Brahmins converted to Islam though retained the practice of the Nagri script for poetry. This is also the case in other parts of South Asia such as Sindh, Multan and Varanasi. Baitali Kaithi was a former script used to write Hindustani at a similar time, and it was identical to Sylhet Nagri with the exception that the latter had a matra (upper horizontal line used in Brahmic scripts). Others say that the script was invented by immigrant Bhikkhus (originally Buddhist in faith) from neighbouring countries such as Nepal.
Manuscripts have been found of works such as Rag Namah by Fazil Nasim Muhammad, Shonabhaner Puthi by Abdul Karim and the earliest known work Talib Husan (1549) by Ghulam Husan.
Transcription
Bengali Muslim poetry was written in a colloquial dialect of Middle Bengali known as Dobhashi, which had a highly Persian and Hindustani lexicon. The literature of Sylheti Nagri was written in a similar style, however is distinguished with its phonology and some vocabulary being strongly influenced by Sylheti.