Devanagari

Name for the most common northern
Indian script, in which the sacred
Sanskrit, modern Hindi, and Marathi
languages are commonly written to this
day. It is a descendant of the ancient
Brahmi script, and from it developed
the scripts used for the modern Bengali,
Gujarati, Oriya, and Punjabi languages.
Its most characteristic feature is that the
top element of most letters is a horizontal line, which, when the letters are written together, causes the letters to
“hang,” like laundry from a clothesline.
Its name literally means “[script of the]
city of the gods,” and according to one
theory, it was given this name because it
was developed in Benares, one of the
holiest cities in India.