Nagari script

Main articles: Devanagari, Nandinagari, and Nagari script

Many modern era manuscripts are written and available in the Nagari script, whose
form is attestable to the 1st millennium CE.[266] The Nagari script is the ancestor
of Devanagari (north India), Nandinagari (south India) and other variants. The
Nagari script was in regular use by 7th century CE, and had fully evolved into
Devanagari and Nandinagari[267] scripts by about the end of the first millennium of
the common era.[268][269] The Devanagari script, states Banerji, became more
popular for Sanskrit in India since about the 18th-century.[270] However, Sanskrit
does have special historical connection to the Nagari script as attested by the
epigraphical evidence.[271]
Sanskrit in modern Indian and other Brahmi scripts: May Siva bless those who take
delight in the language of the gods. (Kalidasa)

The Nagari script has been thought as a north Indian script for Sanskrit as well as
the regional languages such as Hindi, Marathi and Nepali. However, it has had a
"supra-local" status as evidenced by 1st-millennium CE epigraphy and manuscripts
discovered all over India and as far as Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia and in its
parent form called the Siddhamatrka script found in manuscripts of East Asia.[272]
The Sanskrit and Balinese languages Sanur inscription on Belanjong pillar of Bali
(Indonesia), dated to about 914 CE, is in part in the Nagari script.[273]

The Nagari script used for Classical Sanskrit has the fullest repertoire of
characters consisting of fourteen vowels and thirty three consonants. For the Vedic
Sanskrit, it has two more allophonic consonantal characters (the intervocalic ? ?a,
and ??? ?ha).[272] To communicate phonetic accuracy, it also includes several
modifiers such as the anusvara dot and the visarga double dot, punctuation symbols
and others such as the halanta sign.[272]