Moḍī
A verse from Dnyaneshwari in Moḍī script
Type	Abugida
Spoken languages	Marathi, Sanskrit
Time period	c. 1600–c. 1950
Parent systems	Proto-Canaanite alphabet [a] Phoenician alphabet [a] Aramaic alphabet [a] Brāhmī Gupta Nāgarī Devanāgarī Moḍī
Sister systems	Gujarati Ranjana
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

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Moḍī (मोडी) is the name of one of the scripts used to write the Marathi language, which is the primary language spoken in the state of Maharashtra in western India. There are several theories about the origin of this script. One of them claims that it was developed by Hemadpant (or Hemadri Pandit) during the reign of Mahadev Yadav and Ramdev Yadav (1260-1309). Others claim that it was brought by Hemandpant from Sri Lanka.

In any case, there seems to be consensus among scholars that the word "Moḍī" is a translation of the Persian word "Shikasta", which means "breaking". There are also other experts who believe that the word 'Modi' could have been derived from the word 'Mouryi' which indicates the origin or derivation of Modi from an earlier 'Mouryi' script used during the reign of the Maurya dynasty who ruled India during 322–185 BCE. Modi was developed as a faster way of writing Marathi as compared to the more complicated Devanagari script. This was done by "breaking" some of the characters of the alphabet (to make them simpler) and also by making them more "circular" in shape, which aided in moving from one character to the next without lifting the pen from the paper. Thus, Modi was a sort of "cursive" (not "shorthand") style of writing Marathi, although reading it may not have been as easy.

Charles Wilkins developed Moḍī metal types, which were used to a limited extent to publish books. The script was still in use until around 1950, when it was officially discontinued due to the difficulty in printing with this script. All Marathi writing since then has been written and printed in the Devanagari script, which is the same script as is used to write Hindi and some other Indian languages.

Some linguists in Pune have recently begun trying to revive the script.

[edit] External links

• Modi at Omniglot
• Modi at Ancient Scripts
• More information on Modi, including a tutorial
• Site on Modi Script(Marathi)
• Orkut Group dedicated for the preservation of the script