過去或現在用來書寫南亞和東南亞許多語言的數十種文字的統稱。除了約西元前4世紀到西元3世紀使用的佉盧文字外，該地區所有現存文字皆源於婆羅米（Brahmi）文字，中世紀阿育王的印度-雅利安石刻（西元前3世紀）是最早的證明。在阿育王以後的六個世紀裏，婆羅米文字分化為北方和南方兩種變體。北方形式發展為所謂的岌多體文字（4～5世紀），最後發展為天城體文字（現用來書寫梵語、印地語、馬拉塔語、尼泊爾語）、孟加拉文、奧裏雅（Oriya）文和果魯穆奇文（Gurmukhi，錫克教經籍文字）的前身，也用於印度的現代旁遮普語。南方形式則發展為僧伽羅語（Sinhalese）、泰盧固語（Telugu）、坎納達語（Kannada）的文字體系以及帕那瓦（Pallava）文字，後者形成其他無數文字的基礎，包括坦米爾語和馬拉雅拉姆語、許多東南亞文字（例如那些用來書寫孟語、緬甸語、高棉語、泰語、寮語的文字）及若干南島諸語言。
Indic writing systems
Set of several dozen scripts used now or in the past to write many South and Southeast Asian languages. Aside from the Kharoshthi (Kharosthi) script, used c. 4th century BC-3rd century AD, all extant writing of the region descends from the Brahmi script, first attested in the Middle Indo-Aryan rock inscriptions of Ashoka (3rd century BC). In the first six centuries after Asoka, Brahmi appears to have diversified into northern and southern variants. The northern types gave rise to the so-called Gupta scripts (4th-5th century), which are ultimately the progenitors of the Devanagari script (now used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali), the Bengali and Oriya scripts, and Gurmukhi, the script of the Sikh scriptures, used also for modern Punjabi in India. The southern types gave rise to the Sinhalese, Telugu, and Kannada scripts on the one hand, and to the Pallava script on the other. The latter formed the basis of numerous other scripts, including those of the Tamil and Malayalam languages, a host of Asian scripts (e.g., those used to write Mon, Burmese, Khmer, Thai, and Lao), and a number of Austronesian languages.
