| 释义 |
‖ Devanagari, a. and n.|ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːgəriː|
[Skr., Hindī, Marāthī dēvanāgarī (in Bengālī devanāgar), a compound app. of Skr. dēva god + Nāgarī an earlier or a more generic appellation of the same alphabet; lit. ‘Nāgarī (? town-script) of the gods’.
Nāgarī is app. the fem. adj. meaning ‘of the city or town, urban, urbane, refined’ (sc. lipi writing, script), f. Skr. nagara city. Its application to a particular written character can be traced back to the 11th c., when Albirūnī mentions an alphabet called Nāgara, and of a derivative from it called Ardha-nāgarī, i.e. ‘half-Nāgarī’. The actual origin and history of the compound Dēva-nāgarī has not been ascertained, any more than that of Nandi-nāgarī, applied to the South-Indian form of the Nāgarī. It has been noted that the terms dēva-lipi ‘writing of the gods’, and nāga-lipi ‘writing of the serpents’, occur side by side in a list of 64 kinds of writing enumerated in the Buddhistic Lalitavistara of the 7th c.; but whether these terms have any connexion with dēva-nāgarī is unknown. The 18th c. European scholars who adopted the word, have variant forms from Bengālī or other Indian vernaculars.]
The distinctive name of the formal alphabet in which, throughout northern, western and central India, Cashmere, and Nepāl, the Sanskrit has, for some centuries, been written, as are also the vernacular languages of those regions. Also called simply Nagari, though the latter is often used in a wider sense, to embrace various local forms taken by the same original alphabet. Used both as adj. and absolutely as n.
1781Sir C. Wilkins in Asiatic Res. (1799) I. 294 It differs but little from the Dewnagur. 1784W. Chambers Ibid. I. 152 It resembles neither the Devya-nâgre nor any of the various characters connected with..it. 1785Sir C. Wilkins Ibid. I. 279 In the modern Dēwnāgăr character. 1786Sir W. Jones Ibid. I. 423 The polished and elegant Dévanágarí. 1789Ibid. I. 13 We may apply our present alphabet so..as to equal the Dévanágarí itself in precision and clearness. 1801Colebrooke Ibid. (1803) VII. 224 foot-note, Prácrit and Hindí books are commonly written in the Dévanágarí. 1820W. Yates Gram. Skr. Lang. vii, The character in which Sunscrit works are usually printed is called Daivŭ-nāgŭree. 1845Stocqueler Handbk. Brit. India (1854) 55 The translation to be written..both in Persian and Deva Nagree. 1876Times 15 May (Stanf.), His alphabet was founded on the Devanagari, which he accommodated to the needs of the Tibetan tongue. 1879Burnell S. Indian Palæog. (ed. 2) 52 The South-Indian form of the Nāgarī character..the Nandinagarī is directly derived from the N. Indian Devanāgarī of about the eleventh century. 1886Eggeling in Encyc. Brit. XXI. 272/2 The character..is the so-called Devanâgarî, or nâgarî (‘town-script’) of the gods. |