As the name suggests “Sharda”, the first thing that strikes our mind is Maa Saraswati, because Sharda is her another name. Since Kashmiri Pandits were par excellence in the fields of education and knowledge, perhaps for this reason they kept the name of their script as Sharda. Another anecdote regarding the etymology of this script goes as – there’s a place called Sharda Peeth in Kashmir, which actually functioned as a temple institution between the 6th and 12th centuries CE. It is said that the temple institution played a pivotal role in the development of the Sharda script and hence the script was named after it. Yet, another anecdote holds that the name refers to one Shardanandana, who first developed a writing system for the Kashmiri language. However, the name is not found in early sources and is believed to be of later origins. Some also believe that the script owes its name to the region in which it was most popularly used, which was called Sharda Desh, the place whose main goddess was Sharda, or Saraswati, the goddess of learning.
Sharda is the original script of Kashmir. It evolved from the Western branch of Brahmi approximately 1800 years ago, when the language of Kashmir was developing into “Kashmiri”, with its variations. As a result, Sharda, later became unfit for Sanskrit. However, it was continued to be used for writing Sanskrit in Kashmir. It was also said by few scholars that the old Sharda script remain confined with the Kashmiri Brahmans (Kashmiri Pandits)and was too restricted to religious purposes only . Most of the scriptures of Kashmir used to be written in Sharda till 13th century when Muslim kingdoms replaced it with Persian language.
Sharda script was much in use in Kashmir as well as it was too used in North Western India, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh and even in Central Asia. Almost all the ancient Sanskrit literature of Kashmir is written in this script. To put it in a simple equation –
Script: Sharda + Language: Sanskrit = Kashmiri Literatures
If you carefully look at the Sharda script, you will find that it’s somewhat similar with the Gurumukhi script. And this is due to the reason that Gurumukhi is a direct descendent of Sharda. Devanagari emerged around 1200 CE from the Sharda script. Sharda script is first seen in a manuscript discovered from the village Bakhshali in the Peshawar district of Pakistan.
The Sharda script has actually lost its identity with the pace of the decades. As a matter of fact, it has been designated the position of endangered script as a large number of population forgot the essence of the same. The Kashmiri Pandits have maintained and labelled this script as a part of their disrupting identity; they are the ones who are actually surviving to preserve the script as a part of their culture and heritage and are also making aware the younger generations about the same.
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/how-long-can-the-sharada-script-be-kept-alive
In this link, you can further read about this endangered indigenous script.
Finding Sharda Script on a Site
The earliest known records of the Sharada characters are the coins of the Utpala dynasty of Kashmir (9th century CE) and a brief record carved on the fragment of a broken jar discovered from the Avantiswami temple, mentioning the name of Avantivarman, (855-883 CE) the founder of the temple.
This is the major history associated with the origins of this script, that are now being preserved by the Kashmiri Pandit community.
Eduindex News 
You must be logged in to post a comment.