The Kawi script or the Old Javanese script (Indonesian: aksara kawi, aksara carakan kuna) is a Brahmic script found primarily in Java and used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia between the 8th century and the 16th century. [1]

Copy of stele written in Kawi script. Old Javanese or Kawi is an Austronesian language and the oldest attested phase of the Javanese language. It was natively spoken in the central and eastern part of Java Island, what is now Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java Provinces, Indonesia.

Script family: Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Brāhmī, Pallava, Kawi, Javanese Writing direction : left to right in horizontal lines The Javanese alphabet consists of akṣara (letters), saṇḍangan (diacritics), wilangan (numerals), and pada (punctuation).

Javanese script was actively used by the Javanese people for writing day-to-day and literary texts from at least the mid-16th century CE until the mid-20th century CE, before it was gradually supplanted by the Latin alphabet.

Aug 23, 2013 · This ancient script also known as Carakan was used for over a thousand years, and numerous books have been published in it. These days there’s little book publishing in it, though it is still used in some textbooks, in some Facebook groups and in public signs.

eastern parts of Java. In fact, Old Javanese is the only Malayo-Polynesian language for which ancient documents are extant, with the exception of a few Old Malay inscriptions. Some form of Kawi was the spoken language of Java in prehistoric times. Our earliest record of its use is the Sukabumi charter, dated 804 A.D. [ Zoetmulder (1974:3)] .

Oct 6, 2024 · The Javanese script, also known as “Hanacaraka” or “Carakan,” is an important part of Indonesia’s cultural heritage. It is a traditional writing system that has been used for centuries to write the Javanese language.

Kawi is the ancestor of traditional Indonesian scripts, such as Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese, as well as traditional Philippine scripts such as Luzon Kavi, the ancient scripts of Laguna Copperplate Inscriptions 900 A.D. and baybayin that has surviving records from the …

Oct 30, 2017 · It is a direct derivation of the Pallava script brought by traders from the ancient Tamil Kingdom of the south Indian Pallava dynasty in India, primarily used for writing Sanskrit and Old Javanese language. It is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as many languages from other parts of ...

Among the most ancient literature in Old Javanese are the retellings of sections from the great Indian epic, the Mahābhārata. Theses sections, or parwa, were translated into Kawi prose sometime late in the tenth century. This occurred in the East Javanese court of the dynasty of Sindok, who moved his capital from Central Java about 930 A.D.