CHAPTER I.
THE ALPHABET.
§ 1. THE CHARACTER.
The Bengali language is written in a character allied to, but distinct from, the Devanāgarī, in which Sanskrit and some of the modern vernaculars are written. The Bengali letters are derived directly from the older character known as Kutila, which is found in inscriptions as late as the eleventh century of our era, and which in its turn is a development of the still older Gupta character, which again carries us back to the forms used in the ancient inscriptions of Asoka in the third century B.C. The gradual modifications by which the Kutila alphabet has been changed into the modern Bengali can be traced with considerable clearness in inscriptions later than the eleventh century which have been discovered in many parts of Bengal.
The order and number of the vowels and consonants are the same in Bengali as in the other Aryan languages of India.
Vowels.
| অ | a | আ | ā | ||||
| ই | i | ঈ | ī | এ | e | ঐ | ai |
| উ | u | ঊ | ū | ও | o | ঔ | au |
| ঋ | ṛi | ৠ | ṛī | ||||
| ঌ | lṛi | ৡ | lṛī | ||||
| অং | aṉg | অঃ | aḥ |
