title: Properties of water

text: In pure water, sensitive equipment can detect a very slight electrical conductivity of 0.05501 ± 0.0001 μS/cm at 25.00 °C. Water can also be electrolyzed into oxygen and hydrogen gases but in the absence of dissolved ions this is a very slow process, as very little current is conducted. In ice, the primary charge carriers are protons (see proton conductor). Ice was previously thought to have a small but measurable conductivity of 1 S/cm, but this conductivity is now thought to be almost entirely from surface defects, and without those, ice is an insulator with an immeasurably small conductivity.


title: Properties of water

text: An important feature of water is its polar nature. The structure has a bent molecular geometry for the two hydrogens from the oxygen vertex. The oxygen atom also has two lone pairs of electrons. One effect usually ascribed to the lone pairs is that the H–O–H gas-phase bend angle is 104.48°, which is smaller than the typical tetrahedral angle of 109.47°. The lone pairs are closer to the oxygen atom than the electrons sigma bonded to the hydrogens, so they require more space. The increased repulsion of the lone pairs forces the O–H bonds closer to each other.


title: Properties of water

text: Another consequence of its structure is that water is a polar molecule. Due to the difference in electronegativity, a bond dipole moment points from each H to the O, making the oxygen partially negative and each hydrogen partially positive. A large molecular dipole, points from a region between the two hydrogen atoms to the oxygen atom. The charge differences cause water molecules to aggregate (the relatively positive areas being attracted to the relatively negative areas). This attraction, hydrogen bonding, explains many of the properties of water, such as its solvent properties.


title: Properties of water

text: Although hydrogen bonding is a relatively weak attraction compared to the covalent bonds within the water molecule itself, it is responsible for several of the water's physical properties. These properties include its relatively high melting and boiling point temperatures: more energy is required to break the hydrogen bonds between water molecules. In contrast, hydrogen sulfide (), has much weaker hydrogen bonding due to sulfur's lower electronegativity. is a gas at room temperature, despite hydrogen sulfide having nearly twice the molar mass of water. The extra bonding between water molecules also gives liquid water a large specific heat capacity. This high heat capacity makes water a good heat storage medium (coolant) and heat shield.


title: Properties of water

text: Water molecules stay close to each other (cohesion), due to the collective action of hydrogen bonds between water molecules. These hydrogen bonds are constantly breaking, with new bonds being formed with different water molecules; but at any given time in a sample of liquid water, a large portion of the molecules are held together by such bonds.


title: Properties of water

text: Water also has high adhesion properties because of its polar nature. On clean, smooth glass the water may form a thin film because the molecular forces between glass and water molecules (adhesive forces) are stronger than the cohesive forces. In biological cells and organelles, water is in contact with membrane and protein surfaces that are hydrophilic; that is, surfaces that have a strong attraction to water. Irving Langmuir observed a strong repulsive force between hydrophilic surfaces. To dehydrate hydrophilic surfaces—to remove the strongly held layers of water of hydration—requires doing substantial work against these forces, called hydration forces. These forces are very large but decrease rapidly over a nanometer or less. They are important in biology, particularly when cells are dehydrated by exposure to dry atmospheres or to extracellular freezing.


title: Properties of water

text: Water has an unusually high surface tension of 71.99 mN/m at 25 °C which is caused by the strength of the hydrogen bonding between water molecules. This allows insects to walk on water.


title: Properties of water

text: Because water has strong cohesive and adhesive forces, it exhibits capillary action. Strong cohesion from hydrogen bonding and adhesion allows trees to transport water more than 100 m upward.


title: Properties of water

text: Water is an excellent solvent due to its high dielectric constant. Substances that mix well and dissolve in water are known as hydrophilic ("water-loving") substances, while those that do not mix well with water are known as hydrophobic ("water-fearing") substances. The ability of a substance to dissolve in water is determined by whether or not the substance can match or better the strong attractive forces that water molecules generate between other water molecules. If a substance has properties that do not allow it to overcome these strong intermolecular forces, the molecules are precipitated out from the water. Contrary to the common misconception, water and hydrophobic substances do not "repel", and the hydration of a hydrophobic surface is energetically, but not entropically, favorable.


title: Properties of water

text: When an ionic or polar compound enters water, it is surrounded by water molecules (hydration). The relatively small size of water molecules (~ 3 angstroms) allows many water molecules to surround one molecule of solute. The partially negative dipole ends of the water are attracted to positively charged components of the solute, and vice versa for the positive dipole ends.


title: Properties of water

text: In general, ionic and polar substances such as acids, alcohols, and salts are relatively soluble in water, and nonpolar substances such as fats and oils are not. Nonpolar molecules stay together in water because it is energetically more favorable for the water molecules to hydrogen bond to each other than to engage in van der Waals interactions with non-polar molecules.


title: Properties of water

text: An example of an ionic solute is table salt; the sodium chloride, NaCl, separates into cations and anions, each being surrounded by water molecules. The ions are then easily transported away from their crystalline lattice into solution. An example of a nonionic solute is table sugar. The water dipoles make hydrogen bonds with the polar regions of the sugar molecule (OH groups) and allow it to be carried away into solution.


title: Properties of water

text: The quantum tunneling dynamics in water was reported as early as 1992. At that time it was known that there are motions which destroy and regenerate the weak hydrogen bond by internal rotations of the substituent water monomers. On 18 March 2016, it was reported that the hydrogen bond can be broken by quantum tunneling in the water hexamer. Unlike previously reported tunneling motions in water, this involved the concerted breaking of two hydrogen bonds. Later in the same year, the discovery of the quantum tunneling of water molecules was reported.


title: Properties of water

text: Water is relatively transparent to visible light, near ultraviolet light, and far-red light, but it absorbs most ultraviolet light, infrared light, and microwaves. Most photoreceptors and photosynthetic pigments utilize the portion of the light spectrum that is transmitted well through water. Microwave ovens take advantage of water's opacity to microwave radiation to heat the water inside of foods. Water's light blue colour is caused by weak absorption in the red part of the visible spectrum.


title: Properties of water

text: A single water molecule can participate in a maximum of four hydrogen bonds because it can accept two bonds using the lone pairs on oxygen and donate two hydrogen atoms. Other molecules like hydrogen fluoride, ammonia, and methanol can also form hydrogen bonds. However, they do not show anomalous thermodynamic, kinetic, or structural properties like those observed in water because none of them can form four hydrogen bonds: either they cannot donate or accept hydrogen atoms, or there are steric effects in bulky residues. In water, intermolecular tetrahedral structures form due to the four hydrogen bonds, thereby forming an open structure and a three-dimensional bonding network, resulting in the anomalous decrease in density when cooled below 4 °C. This repeated, constantly reorganizing unit defines a three-dimensional network extending throughout the liquid. This view is based upon neutron scattering studies and computer simulations, and it makes sense in the light of the unambiguously tetrahedral arrangement of water molecules in ice structures.


title: Properties of water

text: However, there is an alternative theory for the structure of water. In 2004, a controversial paper from Stockholm University suggested that water molecules in the liquid state typically bind not to four but only two others; thus forming chains and rings. The term "string theory of water" (which is not to be confused with the string theory of physics) was coined. These observations were based upon X-ray absorption spectroscopy that probed the local environment of individual oxygen atoms.


title: Properties of water

text: The repulsive effects of the two lone pairs on the oxygen atom cause water to have a bent, not linear, molecular structure, allowing it to be polar. The hydrogen–oxygen–hydrogen angle is 104.45°, which is less than the 109.47° for ideal sp hybridization. The valence bond theory explanation is that the oxygen atom's lone pairs are physically larger and therefore take up more space than the oxygen atom's bonds to the hydrogen atoms. The molecular orbital theory explanation (Bent's rule) is that lowering the energy of the oxygen atom's nonbonding hybrid orbitals (by assigning them more s character and less p character) and correspondingly raising the energy of the oxygen atom's hybrid orbitals bonded to the hydrogen atoms (by assigning them more p character and less s character) has the net effect of lowering the energy of the occupied molecular orbitals because the energy of the oxygen atom's nonbonding hybrid orbitals contributes completely to the energy of the oxygen atom's lone pairs while the energy of the oxygen atom's other two hybrid orbitals contributes only partially to the energy of the bonding orbitals (the remainder of the contribution coming from the hydrogen atoms' 1s orbitals).


title: Properties of water

text: The equilibrium constant for this reaction, known as the ionic product of water, formula_1, has a value of about at 25 °C. At neutral pH, the concentration of the hydroxide ion () equals that of the (solvated) hydrogen ion (), with a value close to 10 mol L at 25 °C. See data page for values at other temperatures.


title: Properties of water

text: The thermodynamic equilibrium constant is a quotient of thermodynamic activities of all products and reactants including water:


title: Properties of water

text: However for dilute solutions, the activity of a solute such as HO or OH is approximated by its concentration, and the activity of the solvent HO is approximated by 1, so that we obtain the simple ionic product formula_3


title: Properties of water

text: The action of water on rock over long periods of time typically leads to weathering and water erosion, physical processes that convert solid rocks and minerals into soil and sediment, but under some conditions chemical reactions with water occur as well, resulting in metasomatism or mineral hydration, a type of chemical alteration of a rock which produces clay minerals. It also occurs when Portland cement hardens.


title: Properties of water

text: Water ice can form clathrate compounds, known as clathrate hydrates, with a variety of small molecules that can be embedded in its spacious crystal lattice. The most notable of these is methane clathrate, 4 , naturally found in large quantities on the ocean floor.


title: Properties of water

text: Rain is generally mildly acidic, with a pH between 5.2 and 5.8 if not having any acid stronger than carbon dioxide. If high amounts of nitrogen and sulfur oxides are present in the air, they too will dissolve into the cloud and raindrops, producing acid rain.


title: Properties of water

text: Several isotopes of both hydrogen and oxygen exist, giving rise to several known isotopologues of water. Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water is the current international standard for water isotopes. Naturally occurring water is almost completely composed of the neutron-less hydrogen isotope protium. Only 155 ppm include deuterium ( or D), a hydrogen isotope with one neutron, and fewer than 20 parts per quintillion include tritium ( or T), which has two neutrons. Oxygen also has three stable isotopes, with present in 99.76%, in 0.04%, and in 0.2% of water molecules.


title: Properties of water

text: Deuterium oxide, , is also known as heavy water because of its higher density. It is used in nuclear reactors as a neutron moderator. Tritium is radioactive, decaying with a half-life of 4500 days; exists in nature only in minute quantities, being produced primarily via cosmic ray-induced nuclear reactions in the atmosphere. Water with one protium and one deuterium atom occur naturally in ordinary water in low concentrations (~0.03%) and in far lower amounts (0.000003%) and any such molecules are temporary as the atoms recombine.


title: Properties of water

text: The most notable physical differences between and , other than the simple difference in specific mass, involve properties that are affected by hydrogen bonding, such as freezing and boiling, and other kinetic effects. This is because the nucleus of deuterium is twice as heavy as protium, and this causes noticeable differences in bonding energies. The difference in boiling points allows the isotopologues to be separated. The self-diffusion coefficient of at 25 °C is 23% higher than the value of . Because water molecules exchange hydrogen atoms with one another, hydrogen deuterium oxide (DOH) is much more common in low-purity heavy water than pure dideuterium monoxide .


title: Properties of water

text: Consumption of pure isolated may affect biochemical processes—ingestion of large amounts impairs kidney and central nervous system function. Small quantities can be consumed without any ill-effects; humans are generally unaware of taste differences, but sometimes report a burning sensation or sweet flavor. Very large amounts of heavy water must be consumed for any toxicity to become apparent. Rats, however, are able to avoid heavy water by smell, and it is toxic to many animals.


title: Properties of water

text: "Light water" refers to deuterium-depleted water (DDW), water in which the deuterium content has been reduced below the standard level.


title: Properties of water

text: Water is the most abundant substance on Earth and also the third most abundant molecule in the universe, after and . 0.23 ppm of the earth's mass is water and 97.39% of the global water volume of 1.38 km is found in the oceans.


title: Properties of water

text: Water is amphoteric: it has the ability to act as either an acid or a base in chemical reactions. According to the Brønsted-Lowry definition, an acid is a proton () donor and a base is a proton acceptor. When reacting with a stronger acid, water acts as a base; when reacting with a stronger base, it acts as an acid. For instance, water receives an ion from HCl when hydrochloric acid is formed:


title: Properties of water

text: Because the oxygen atom in water has two lone pairs, water often acts as a Lewis base, or electron-pair donor, in reactions with Lewis acids, although it can also react with Lewis bases, forming hydrogen bonds between the electron pair donors and the hydrogen atoms of water. HSAB theory describes water as both a weak hard acid and a weak hard base, meaning that it reacts preferentially with other hard species:


title: Properties of water

text: When a salt of a weak acid or of a weak base is dissolved in water, water can partially hydrolyze the salt, producing the corresponding base or acid, which gives aqueous solutions of soap and baking soda their basic pH:


title: Properties of water

text: Water's Lewis base character makes it a common ligand in transition metal complexes, examples of which include metal aquo complexes such as to perrhenic acid, which contains two water molecules coordinated to a rhenium center. In solid hydrates, water can be either a ligand or simply lodged in the framework, or both. Thus, consists of [Fe(HO)] centers and one "lattice water". Water is typically a monodentate ligand, i.e., it forms only one bond with the central atom.


title: Properties of water

text: As a hard base, water reacts readily with organic carbocations; for example in a hydration reaction, a hydroxyl group () and an acidic proton are added to the two carbon atoms bonded together in the carbon-carbon double bond, resulting in an alcohol. When the addition of water to an organic molecule cleaves the molecule in two, hydrolysis is said to occur. Notable examples of hydrolysis are the saponification of fats and the digestion of proteins and polysaccharides. Water can also be a leaving group in S2 substitution and E2 elimination reactions; the latter is then known as a dehydration reaction.


title: Properties of water

text: Water contains hydrogen in the oxidation state +1 and oxygen in the oxidation state −2. It oxidizes chemicals such as hydrides, alkali metals, and some alkaline earth metals. One example of an alkali metal reacting with water is:


title: Properties of water

text: Some other reactive metals, such as aluminum and beryllium, are oxidized by water as well, but their oxides adhere to the metal and form a passive protective layer. Note that the rusting of iron is a reaction between iron and oxygen that is dissolved in water, not between iron and water.


title: Properties of water

text: Water can be oxidized to emit oxygen gas, but very few oxidants react with water even if their reduction potential is greater than the potential of . Almost all such reactions require a catalyst. An example of the oxidation of water is:


title: Properties of water

text: Water can be split into its constituent elements, hydrogen, and oxygen, by passing an electric current through it. This process is called electrolysis. The cathode half reaction is:


title: Properties of water

text: The gases produced bubble to the surface, where they can be collected or ignited with a flame above the water if this was the intention. The required potential for the electrolysis of pure water is 1.23 V at 25 °C. The operating potential is actually 1.48 V or higher in practical electrolysis.


title: Properties of water

text: Henry Cavendish showed that water was composed of oxygen and hydrogen in 1781. The first decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen, by electrolysis, was done in 1800 by English chemist William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle. In 1805, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Alexander von Humboldt showed that water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.


title: Properties of water

text: The properties of water have historically been used to define various temperature scales. Notably, the Kelvin, Celsius, Rankine, and Fahrenheit scales were, or currently are, defined by the freezing and boiling points of water. The less common scales of Delisle, Newton, Réaumur, and Rømer were defined similarly. The triple point of water is a more commonly used standard point today.


title: Properties of water

text: The accepted IUPAC name of water is "oxidane" or simply "water", or its equivalent in different languages, although there are other systematic names which can be used to describe the molecule. Oxidane is only intended to be used as the name of the mononuclear parent hydride used for naming derivatives of water by substituent nomenclature. These derivatives commonly have other recommended names. For example, the name hydroxyl is recommended over "oxidanyl" for the –OH group. The name oxane is explicitly mentioned by the IUPAC as being unsuitable for this purpose, since it is already the name of a cyclic ether also known as tetrahydropyran.


title: Properties of water

text: The simplest systematic name of water is "hydrogen oxide". This is analogous to related compounds such as hydrogen peroxide, hydrogen sulfide, and deuterium oxide (heavy water). Using chemical nomenclature for type I ionic binary compounds, water would take the name "hydrogen monoxide", but this is not among the names published by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Another name is "dihydrogen monoxide", which is a rarely used name of water, and mostly used in the dihydrogen monoxide parody.


title: Properties of water

text: Other systematic names for water include "hydroxic acid", "hydroxylic acid", and "hydrogen hydroxide", using acid and base names. None of these exotic names are used widely. The polarized form of the water molecule, , is also called hydron hydroxide by IUPAC nomenclature.


title: Properties of water

text: "Water substance" is a term used for hydrogen oxide (HO) when one does not wish to specify whether one is speaking of liquid water, steam, some form of ice, or a component in a mixture or mineral.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Mathew Knowles (born January 9, 1952) is an American record executive, businessman and university lecturer. He is best known for being the manager of Destiny's Child. He also once managed the solo careers of his daughters Beyoncé and Solange Knowles.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Knowles is the founder of Music World Entertainment, which embraces country, gospel and children's music. Knowles is also an active and longtime voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and serves on its Grammy Board Committee.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Knowles was born in Gadsden, Alabama, the son of Lou Helen Knowles ("née" Hogue) and Matthew Q. Knowles (April 4, 1927 – December 30, 1996). He is a 1974 graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he earned both a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. He has an MBA in Strategic Planning and Organizational Culture from Cornerstone Christian Bible College.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Knowles began his business career in sales of office and medical equipment. He moved to Houston in 1976 and worked for the Xerox Corporation for 10 years, primarily in the medical-systems sales division. Knowles worked selling CT/MRI diagnostic imaging equipment to hospitals and health facilities. He also worked in neurosurgical sales. In 1992, Knowles left this career to devote himself to his music company, Music World Entertainment, which he founded that year.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Knowles established several recording imprints under Music World Entertainment, including Music World Gospel, Music World Kids, and Music World Country/Compadre. Knowles also established joint ventures with Sony Music, Interscope/Geffen/A&M, Fontana/Universal, Integrity Africa, Fontana International, and Sony Brazil.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Knowles became manager of the vocal group Destiny's Child, working as either a producer or an executive producer on many of the group's projects. In the early 1990s, Knowles brought in producers such as Wyclef Jean, Jermaine Dupri, and Master P to focus on a fusion of hip hop with R&B to cross over to different audiences. By 1997 he secured the group a label deal with Columbia Records and a feature on the . Under Music World Artist Management, Destiny's Child became a top-selling group, winning several awards including the Grammy Award, the American Music Award, BET Awards, and many others. "Billboard" magazine inducted the group into the All Time Hot 100 Artists. Knowles also managed the solo careers of Destiny's Child members Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland. Former members LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson once sued Knowles, accusing him of misappropriating group funds.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: In 2002, Knowles founded Spirit Rising Music, which became Music World Gospel. Its artists include Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Brian Courtney Wilson, Juanita Bynum, Le'Andria Johnson, Micah Stampley, Amber Bullock, Andrea Helms, Trinitee 5:7, and Elder Goldwire. In 2016, through Music World Music, Knowles acquired the country music catalog Compadre, which includes James McMurty, Johnny Cash, Billy Joe Shaver, Trent Willmon, and Kate Campbell. Knowles also launched the family-oriented music imprint, Music World Kids. The label has released youth projects that include Baby Jamz, Krazy Kuzins, Kid's Rap Radio, and the Music World Kids CD 5-pack. The venture also has released music from Nick Jr’s popular cartoon series, "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!".


title: Mathew Knowles

text: In addition to his work in music, Knowles was one of the executive producers of the 2009 movie "Obsessed", which starred Beyoncé. He was also executive producer of, and was featured in, two reality series: The UK's "Chancers", and MTV International's "Breaking From Above".


title: Mathew Knowles

text: In October 2015, Mathew Knowles released his first book, "The DNA Of Achievers: 10 Traits of Highly Successful Professionals". In an interview with Madamenoire.com, he spoke about teaching entrepreneurship on the college level, and his entertainment industry seminar where he taught music executives like Van Benson and other successful students.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: In March 2018, Knowles joined the advisory board of Tunedly, an online recording studio for songwriters.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: In July 2019, Knowles joined the cannabis and real-estate firm Bangi as its chief marketing officer. On October 25, Knowles announced via an Instagram video that he would release an album featuring then-unreleased music from Destiny's Child's childhood days as Girls Tyme. The album, "", was released on all streaming platforms and the iTunes Store on December 2, 2019. The album's release was also accompanied by a book, Destiny's Child: The Untold Story, written by Knowles.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: In February 2021, Knowles launched his iHeartRadio podcast "Mathew Knowles Impact" and revealed his plans to retire from the music industry.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: In March 2022, Knowles sold Music World Entertainment Group to APX Capital Group. Upon signing this deal, he became a member of APX's board of directors, and the manager of a $275 million fund for film and television co-productions between the United States and Italy. One of the first projects under the agreement, "The Mathew Knowles Story", will tell the story of how Knowles guided Destiny's Child to success, while also giving a behind-the-scenes look at the solo careers of his daughters Beyoncé and Solange, as well as Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Knowles is a visiting professor at Texas Southern University, where he teaches courses on the entertainment industry in the School of Communications. In 2018, the university established the Mathew Knowles Institute in his honor. He currently holds a professorship at University of Houston, Prairie View A&M University, and the Art Institute. Knowles joined the teaching staff at London College of Creative Media as a visiting professor. In September 2022, a bursary scholarship was established in his name.


title: Mathew Knowles

text: Knowles married Tina Knowles in 1980. She filed for divorce in 2009, dropped the matter in 2010, then refiled in August 2011, stating "discord or conflict of personalities" that prevented them from "reasonable expectation of reconciliation" as the reason. The divorce was finalized in November 2011.


title: Landslide

text: Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, characterized by either steep or gentle slope gradients, from mountain ranges to coastal cliffs or even underwater, in which case they are called submarine landslides. Gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, but there are other factors affecting slope stability that produce specific conditions that make a slope prone to failure. In many cases, the landslide is triggered by a specific event (such as a heavy rainfall, an earthquake, a slope cut to build a road, and many others), although this is not always identifiable.


title: Landslide

text: Landslides occur when the slope (or a portion of it) undergoes some processes that change its condition from stable to unstable. This is essentially due to a decrease in the shear strength of the slope material, an increase in the shear stress borne by the material, or a combination of the two. A change in the stability of a slope can be caused by a number of factors, acting together or alone. Natural causes of landslides include:


title: Landslide

text: In traditional usage, the term landslide has at one time or another been used to cover almost all forms of mass movement of rocks and regolith at the Earth's surface. In 1978, geologist David Varnes noted this imprecise usage and proposed a new, much tighter scheme for the classification of mass movements and subsidence processes. This scheme was later modified by Cruden and Varnes in 1996, and refined by Hutchinson (1988), Hungr et al. (2001), and finally by Hungr, Leroueil and Picarelli (2014). The classification resulting from the latest update is provided below.


title: Landslide

text: Under this classification, six types of movement are recognized. Each type can be seen both in rock and in soil. A fall is a movement of isolated blocks or chunks of soil in free-fall. The term topple refers to blocks coming away by rotation from a vertical face. A slide is the movement of a body of material that generally remains intact while moving over one or several inclined surfaces or thin layers of material (also called shear zones) in which large deformations are concentrated. Slides are also sub-classified by the form of the surface(s) or shear zone(s) on which movement happens. The planes may be broadly parallel to the surface ("planar slides") or spoon-shaped ("rotational slides"). Slides can occur catastrophically, but movement on the surface can also be gradual and progressive. Spreads are a form of subsidence, in which a layer of material cracks, opens up, and expands laterally. Flows are the movement of fluidised material, which can be both dry or rich in water (such as in mud flows). Flows can move imperceptibly for years, or accelerate rapidly and cause disasters. Slope deformations are slow, distributed movements that can affect entire mountain slopes or portions of it. Some landslides are complex in the sense that they feature different movement types in different portions of the moving body, or they evolve from one movement type to another over time. For example, a landslide can initiate as a rock fall or topple and then, as the blocks disintegrate upon the impact, transform into a debris slide or flow. An avalanching effect can also be present, in which the moving mass entrains additional material along its path.


title: Landslide

text: Slope material that becomes saturated with water may produce a debris flow or mud flow. However, also dry debris can exhibit flow-like movement. Flowing debris or mud may pick up trees, houses and cars, and block bridges and rivers causing flooding along its path. This phenomenon is particularly hazardous in alpine areas, where narrow gorges and steep valleys are conducive of faster flows. Debris and mud flows may initiate on the slopes or result from the fluidization of landslide material as it gains speed or incorporates further debris and water along its path. River blockages as the flow reaches a main stream can generate temporary dams. As the impoundments fail, a domino effect may be created, with a remarkable growth in the volume of the flowing mass, and in its destructive power.


title: Landslide

text: An earthflow is the downslope movement of mostly fine-grained material. Earthflows can move at speeds within a very wide range, from as low as 1 mm/yr to many km/h. Though these are a lot like mudflows, overall they are more slow-moving and are covered with solid material carried along by the flow from within. Clay, fine sand and silt, and fine-grained, pyroclastic material are all susceptible to earthflows. These flows are usually controlled by the pore water pressures within the mass, which should be high enough to produce a low shearing resistance. On the slopes, some earthflow may be recognized by their elongated shape, with one or more lobes at their toes. As these lobes spread out, drainage of the mass increases and the margins dry out, lowering the overall velocity of the flow. This process also causes the flow to thicken. Earthflows occur more often during periods of high precipitation, which saturates the ground and builds up water pressures. However, earthflows that keep advancing also during dry seasons are not uncommon. Fissures may develop during the movement of clayey materials, which facilitate the intrusion of water into the moving mass and produce faster responses to precipitation.


title: Landslide

text: A rock avalanche, sometimes referred to as sturzstrom, is a large and fast-moving landslide of the flow type. It is rarer than other types of landslides but it is often very destructive. It exhibits typically a long runout, flowing very far over a low-angle, flat, or even slightly uphill terrain. The mechanisms favoring the long runout can be different, but they typically result in the weakening of the sliding mass as the speed increases. The causes of this weakening are not completely understood. Especially for the largest landslides, it may involve the very quick heating of the shear zone due to friction, which may even cause the water that is present to vaporize and build up a large pressure, producing a sort of hovercraft effect. In some cases, the very high temperature may even cause some of the minerals to melt. During the movement, the rock in the shear zone may also be finely ground, producing a nanometer-size mineral powder that may act as a lubricant, reducing the resistance to motion and promoting larger speeds and longer runouts. The weakening mechanisms in large rock avalanches are similar to those occurring in seismic faults.


title: Landslide

text: Slides can occur in any rock or soil material and are characterized by the movement of a mass over a planar or curvilinear surface or shear zone.


title: Landslide

text: A debris slide is a type of slide characterized by the chaotic movement of material mixed with water and/or ice. It is usually triggered by the saturation of thickly vegetated slopes which results in an incoherent mixture of broken timber, smaller vegetation and other debris. Debris flows and avalanches differ from debris slides because their movement is fluid-like and generally much more rapid. This is usually a result of lower shear resistances and steeper slopes. Debris slides generally begin with the detachment of rock chunks high on the slopes, which break apart as they slide towards the bottom.


title: Landslide

text: Clay and silt slides are usually slow but can experience episodic acceleration in response to heavy rainfall or rapid snowmelt. They are often seen on gentle slopes and move over planar surfaces, such as over the underlying bedrock. Failure surfaces can also form within the clay or silt layer itself, and they usually have concave shapes, resulting in rotational slides


title: Landslide

text: A landslide in which the sliding surface is located within the soil mantle or weathered bedrock (typically to a depth from few decimeters to some meters) is called a shallow landslide. Debris slides and debris flows are usually shallow. Shallow landslides can often happen in areas that have slopes with high permeable soils on top of low permeable soils. The low permeable soil traps the water in the shallower soil generating high water pressures. As the top soil is filled with water, it can become unstable and slide downslope.


title: Landslide

text: Deep-seated landslides are those in which the sliding surface is mostly deeply located, for instance well below the maximum rooting depth of trees. They usually involve deep regolith, weathered rock, and/or bedrock and include large slope failures associated with translational, rotational, or complex movements. They tend to form along a plane of weakness such as a fault or bedding plane. They can be visually identified by concave scarps at the top and steep areas at the toe. Deep-seated landslides also shape landscapes over geological timescales and produce sediment that strongly alters the course of fluvial streams.


title: Landslide

text: Landslides that occur undersea, or have impact into water e.g. significant rockfall or volcanic collapse into the sea, can generate tsunamis. Massive landslides can also generate megatsunamis, which are usually hundreds of meters high. In 1958, one such tsunami occurred in Lituya Bay in Alaska.


title: Landslide

text: Landslide hazard analysis and mapping can provide useful information for catastrophic loss reduction, and assist in the development of guidelines for sustainable land-use planning. The analysis is used to identify the factors that are related to landslides, estimate the relative contribution of factors causing slope failures, establish a relation between the factors and landslides, and to predict the landslide hazard in the future based on such a relationship. The factors that have been used for landslide hazard analysis can usually be grouped into geomorphology, geology, land use/land cover, and hydrogeology. Since many factors are considered for landslide hazard mapping, GIS is an appropriate tool because it has functions of collection, storage, manipulation, display, and analysis of large amounts of spatially referenced data which can be handled fast and effectively. Cardenas reported evidence on the exhaustive use of GIS in conjunction of uncertainty modelling tools for landslide mapping. Remote sensing techniques are also highly employed for landslide hazard assessment and analysis. Before and after aerial photographs and satellite imagery are used to gather landslide characteristics, like distribution and classification, and factors like slope, lithology, and land use/land cover to be used to help predict future events. Before and after imagery also helps to reveal how the landscape changed after an event, what may have triggered the landslide, and shows the process of regeneration and recovery.


title: Landslide

text: Using satellite imagery in combination with GIS and on-the-ground studies, it is possible to generate maps of likely occurrences of future landslides. Such maps should show the locations of previous events as well as clearly indicate the probable locations of future events. In general, to predict landslides, one must assume that their occurrence is determined by certain geologic factors, and that future landslides will occur under the same conditions as past events. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a relationship between the geomorphologic conditions in which the past events took place and the expected future conditions.


title: Landslide

text: Natural disasters are a dramatic example of people living in conflict with the environment. Early predictions and warnings are essential for the reduction of property damage and loss of life. Because landslides occur frequently and can represent some of the most destructive forces on earth, it is imperative to have a good understanding as to what causes them and how people can either help prevent them from occurring or simply avoid them when they do occur. Sustainable land management and development is also an essential key to reducing the negative impacts felt by landslides.


title: Landslide

text: GIS offers a superior method for landslide analysis because it allows one to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, and display large amounts of data quickly and effectively. Because so many variables are involved, it is important to be able to overlay the many layers of data to develop a full and accurate portrayal of what is taking place on the Earth's surface. Researchers need to know which variables are the most important factors that trigger landslides in any given location. Using GIS, extremely detailed maps can be generated to show past events and likely future events which have the potential to save lives, property, and money.


title: Landslide

text: Since the ‘90s, GIS have been also successfully used in conjunction to decision support systems, to show on a map real-time risk evaluations based on monitoring data gathered in the area of the Val Pola disaster (Italy).


title: Landslide

text: Evidence of past landslides has been detected on many bodies in the solar system, but since most observations are made by probes that only observe for a limited time and most bodies in the solar system appear to be geologically inactive not many landslides are known to have happened in recent times. Both Venus and Mars have been subject to long-term mapping by orbiting satellites, and examples of landslides have been observed on both planets.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: The Close Quarter Battle Receiver (CQBR) is a replacement upper receiver for the M4A1 Carbine, developed by the US Navy.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: The CQBR features a 10.3 in (262 mm) length barrel (similar to the Colt Commando short-barreled M16 variants of the past) which makes the weapon significantly more compact, thus making it easier to use in, and around, vehicles and in tight, confined spaces. The overall length of the upper receiver is 19.25 inches (489 mm). With the stock retracted, the overall length of the weapon is 26.75 inches (679.4 mm). Those created as complete rifles (rather than only upper receivers) are type designated as MK 18 MOD 0/1.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: Special forces units utilize the CQBR for scenarios such as VIP protection, urban warfare, and other close quarters battle (CQB) situations.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: Its former preliminary National Stock Number (NSN) had been 1005-LL-L99-5996. A complete CQBR-equipped carbine now has the NSN 1005-01-527-2288.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: The M4 carbine and M16 are not ideally suited for all missions due to their relatively long barrels, but the modularity of AR pattern rifles allows the operator to easily replace the upper receiver. One of two proposed special mission receivers that were planned for inclusion into the SOPMOD Block II kit, the CQBR has taken off on its own. Like the proposed Special Purpose Receiver, the Close Quarters Battle Receiver has been more or less taken on by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (often referred to as NSWC-Crane or just "Crane") as its own project following the CQBR's removal from the SOPMOD program. Just as the Special Purpose Receiver morphed into the Special Purpose Rifle, and was type-classified as Mk 12 MOD 0/1, the complete CQBR-equipped carbine has been type-classified as the Mk 18 MOD 0, or the Mk 18 MOD 1 with a sightless gas block and full-length accessory rail kit.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: The purpose of the CQBR is to provide operators with a weapon of submachine gun size, but firing an intermediate cartridge, for scenarios such as VIP protection, urban warfare, and other close quarters battle (CQB) situations. The CQBR is designed to provide improvement over previous AR-15/M16-type weapons in this category. The CQBR is usually issued as a complete weapon system, and not just an upper receiver. The CQBR was once only available to Naval Special Warfare units (and by extension, other US Special Operations Forces units), but the Mk 18 MOD 0 has become general issue for Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) missions and, as of 2006, for NCIS agents deploying to active combat zones. The Mk 18 is also used by the Coast Guard's Tactical Law Enforcement Teams and Maritime Security Response Teams and the United States Navy's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Operators. It is also used by both Marine Force Recon Teams and Critical Skills operators from MARSOC, and is in most cases the standard weapons of choice for said operators where the range of an M4 is not necessary.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: The short 10.3 in (262mm) barrel length requires special modifications to function reliably. The gas port is opened from 0.062 to 0.070 in (1.6 to 1.8mm). A one-piece McFarland gas ring replaces the three-piece gas ring set. The standard four-coil extractor spring is replaced with a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) five-coil spring. An O-ring surrounds the extractor spring. The standard M4 flash hider has been replaced with the M4QD flash hider for suppressor compatibility.


title: Close Quarters Battle Receiver

text: Shortening the barrel by 50% from the original pattern has a dramatic effect on the velocity of 5.56x45mm NATO ammunition. With a 20" barrel, the bullet is moving at , but this drops to at 10". This has led some to question the effectiveness of the Mk 18 compared to other cartridges like 7.62×39mm or .300 AAC Blackout which are not as affected by barrel length reduction.


title: Brahmi script

text: Brahmi (; ; ISO: "Brāhmī") is a writing system of ancient South Asia that appeared as a fully developed script in the third century BCE. Its descendants, the Brahmic scripts, continue to be used today across South and Southeast Asia.


title: Brahmi script

text: Brahmi is an abugida which uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. The writing system only went through relatively minor evolutionary changes from the Mauryan period (3rd century BCE) down to the early Gupta period (4th century CE), and it is thought that as late as the 4th century CE, a literate person could still read and understand Mauryan inscriptions. Sometime thereafter, the capability to read the original Brahmi script was lost. The earliest (indisputably dated) and best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. The decipherment of Brahmi became the focus of European scholarly attention in the early 19th-century during East India Company rule in India, in particular in the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. Brahmi was deciphered by James Prinsep, the secretary of the Society, in a series of scholarly articles in the Society's journal in the 1830s. His breakthroughs built on the epigraphic work of Christian Lassen, Edwin Norris, H. H. Wilson and Alexander Cunningham, among others.


title: Brahmi script

text: The origin of the script is still much debated, with most scholars stating that Brahmi was derived from or at least influenced by one or more contemporary Semitic scripts, while others favor the idea of an indigenous origin or connection to the much older and as yet undeciphered Indus script of the Harappan culture. Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the "pin-man" script, that is "stick figure" script. It was known by a variety of other names, including "lath", "Laṭ", "Southern Aśokan", "Indian Pali" or "Mauryan" , until the 1880s when Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie, based on an observation by Gabriel Devéria, associated it with the Brahmi script, the first in a list of scripts mentioned in the "Lalitavistara Sūtra". Thence the name was adopted in the influential work of Georg Bühler, albeit in the variant form "Brahma". The Gupta script of the fifth century is sometimes called "Late Brahmi". The Brahmi script diversified into numerous local variants classified together as the Brahmic scripts. Dozens of modern scripts used across South and South East Asia have descended from Brahmi, making it one of the world's most influential writing traditions. One survey found 198 scripts that ultimately derive from it.


title: Brahmi script

text: Among the inscriptions of Ashoka c. 3rd century BCE written in the Brahmi script a few numerals were found, which have come to be called the Brahmi numerals. The numerals are additive and multiplicative and, therefore, not place value; it is not known if their underlying system of numeration has a connection to the Brahmi script. But in the second half of the first millennium CE, some inscriptions in India and Southeast Asia written in scripts derived from the Brahmi did include numerals that are decimal place value, and constitute the earliest existing material examples of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, now in use throughout the world. The underlying system of numeration, however, was older, as the earliest attested orally transmitted example dates to the middle of the 3rd century CE in a Sanskrit prose adaptation of a lost Greek work on astrology.


title: Brahmi script

text: The Brahmi script is mentioned in the ancient Indian texts of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, as well as their Chinese translations. For example, the 10th chapter of the Lalitavistara Sūtra (c. 200-300 CE), titled the "Lipisala samdarshana parivarta," lists 64 "lipi" (scripts), with the Brahmi script starting the list. The "Lalitavistara Sūtra" states that young Siddhartha, the future Gautama Buddha (~500 BCE), mastered philology, Brahmi and other scripts from the Brahmin Lipikāra and Deva Vidyāiṃha at a school.


title: Brahmi script

text: A list of eighteen ancient scripts is found in the texts of Jainism, such as the "Pannavana Sutra" (2nd century BCE) and the "Samavayanga Sutra" (3rd century BCE). These Jaina script lists include Brahmi at number 1 and Kharoṣṭhi at number 4 but also Javanaliya (probably Greek) and others not found in the Buddhist lists.


title: Brahmi script

text: While the contemporary Kharoṣṭhī script is widely accepted to be a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet, the genesis of the Brahmi script is less straightforward. Salomon reviewed existing theories in 1998, while Falk provided an overview in 1993.


title: Brahmi script

text: Early theories proposed a pictographic-acrophonic origin for the Brahmi script, on the model of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script. These ideas however have lost credence, as they are "purely imaginative and speculative". Similar ideas have tried to connect the Brahmi script with the Indus script, but they remain unproven, and particularly suffer from the fact that the Indus script is as yet undeciphered.


title: Brahmi script

text: The mainstream view is that Brahmi has an origin in Semitic scripts (usually Aramaic). This is accepted by the vast majority of script scholars since the publications by Albrecht Weber (1856) and Georg Bühler's "On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet" (1895). Bühler's ideas have been particularly influential, though even by the 1895 date of his opus on the subject, he could identify no fewer than five competing theories of the origin, one positing an indigenous origin and the others deriving it from various Semitic models.


title: Brahmi script

text: The most disputed point about the origin of the Brahmi script has long been whether it was a purely indigenous development or was borrowed or derived from scripts that originated outside India. Goyal (1979) noted that most proponents of the indigenous view are fringe Indian scholars, whereas the theory of Semitic origin is held by "nearly all" Western scholars, and Salomon agrees with Goyal that there has been "nationalist bias" and "imperialist bias" on the two respective sides of the debate. In spite of this, the view of indigenous development had been prevalent among British scholars writing prior to Bühler: A passage by Alexander Cunningham, one of the earliest indigenous origin proponents, suggests that, in his time, the indigenous origin was a preference of British scholars in opposition to the "unknown Western" origin preferred by continental scholars. Cunningham in the seminal "Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum" of 1877 speculated that Brahmi characters were derived from, among other things, a pictographic principle based on the human body, but Bühler noted that by 1891, Cunningham considered the origins of the script uncertain.


title: Brahmi script

text: Most scholars believe that Brahmi was likely derived from or influenced by a Semitic script model, with Aramaic being a leading candidate. However, the issue is not settled due to the lack of direct evidence and unexplained differences between Aramaic, Kharoṣṭhī, and Brahmi. Though Brahmi and the Kharoṣṭhī script share some general features, the differences between the Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts are "much greater than their similarities", and "the overall differences between the two render a direct linear development connection unlikely", states Richard Salomon.


title: Brahmi script

text: Virtually all authors accept that regardless of the origins, the differences between the Indian script and those proposed to have influenced it are significant. The degree of Indian development of the Brahmi script in both the graphic form and the structure has been extensive. It is also widely accepted that theories about the grammar of the Vedic language probably had a strong influence on this development. Some authors – both Western and Indian – suggest that Brahmi was borrowed or inspired by a Semitic script, invented in a short few years during the reign of Ashoka and then used widely for Ashokan inscriptions. In contrast, some authors reject the idea of foreign influence.


title: Brahmi script

text: Bruce Trigger states that Brahmi likely emerged from the Aramaic script but with extensive local development but there is no evidence of a direct common source. According to Trigger, Brahmi was in use before the Ashoka pillars, at least by the 4th or 5th century BCE in Sri Lanka and India, while Kharoṣṭhī was used only in northwest South Asia (eastern parts of modern Afghanistan and neighboring regions of Pakistan) for a while before it died out in ancient times. According to Salomon, the evidence of Kharoṣṭhī script's use is found primarily in Buddhist records and those of Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian, Indo-Parthian and Kushana dynasty era. The Kharoṣṭhī likely fell out of general use in or about the 3rd-century CE.


title: Brahmi script

text: Justeson and Stephens proposed that this inherent vowel system in Brahmi and Kharoṣṭhī developed by transmission of a Semitic abjad through the recitation of its letter values. The idea is that learners of the source alphabet recite the sounds by combining the consonant with an unmarked vowel, e.g. , and in the process of borrowing into another language, these syllables are taken to be the sound values of the symbols. They also accepted the idea that Brahmi was based on a North Semitic model.


title: Brahmi script

text: Many scholars link the origin of Brahmi to Semitic script models, particularly Aramaic. The explanation of how this might have happened, the particular Semitic script, and the chronology of the derivation have been the subject of much debate. Bühler followed Max Weber in connecting it particularly to Phoenician, and proposed an early 8th century BCE date for the borrowing. A link to the South Semitic scripts, a less prominent branch of the Semitic script family, has occasionally been proposed, but has not gained much acceptance. Finally, the Aramaic script being the prototype for Brahmi has been the more preferred hypothesis because of its geographic proximity to the Indian subcontinent, and its influence likely arising because Aramaic was the bureaucratic language of the Achaemenid empire. However, this hypothesis does not explain the mystery of why two very different scripts, Kharoṣṭhī and Brahmi, developed from the same Aramaic. A possible explanation might be that Ashoka created an imperial script for his edicts, but there is no evidence to support this conjecture.


title: Brahmi script

text: The chart below shows the close resemblance that Brahmi has with the first four letters of Semitic script, the first column representing the Phoenician alphabet.


title: Brahmi script

text: According to the Semitic hypothesis as laid out by Bühler in 1898, the oldest Brahmi inscriptions were derived from a Phoenician prototype. Salomon states Bühler's arguments are "weak historical, geographical, and chronological justifications for a Phoenician prototype". Discoveries made since Bühler's proposal, such as of six Mauryan inscriptions in Aramaic, suggest Bühler's proposal about Phoenician as weak. It is more likely that Aramaic, which was virtually certainly the prototype for Kharoṣṭhī, also may have been the basis for Brahmi. However, it is unclear why the ancient Indians would have developed two very different scripts.


title: Brahmi script

text: According to Bühler, Brahmi added symbols for certain sounds not found in Semitic languages, and either deleted or repurposed symbols for Aramaic sounds not found in Prakrit. For example, Aramaic lacks the phonetic retroflex feature that appears among Prakrit dental stops, such as , and in Brahmi the symbols of the retroflex and non-retroflex consonants are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single prototype. (See Tibetan alphabet for a similar later development.) Aramaic did not have Brahmi's aspirated consonants (, , etc.), whereas Brahmi did not have Aramaic's emphatic consonants (""), and it appears that these unneeded emphatic letters filled in for some of Brahmi's aspirates: Aramaic "q" for Brahmi "kh," Aramaic "ṭ" (Θ) for Brahmi "th" (), etc. And just where Aramaic did not have a corresponding emphatic stop, "p", Brahmi seems to have doubled up for the corresponding aspirate: Brahmi "p" and "ph" are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic "p". Bühler saw a systematic derivational principle for the other aspirates "ch", "jh", "ph", "bh", and "dh", which involved adding a curve or upward hook to the right side of the character (which has been speculated to derive from "h", ), while "d" and "ṭ" (not to be confused with the Semitic emphatic ) were derived by back formation from "dh" and "ṭh".


title: Brahmi script

text: Bühler states that both Phoenician and Brahmi had three voiceless sibilants, but because the alphabetical ordering was lost, the correspondences among them are not clear. Bühler was able to suggest Brahmi derivatives corresponding to all of the 22 North Semitic characters, though clearly, as Bühler himself recognized, some are more confident than others. He tended to place much weight on phonetic congruence as a guideline, for example connecting "c" to tsade 𐤑 rather than kaph 𐤊, as preferred by many of his predecessors.


title: Brahmi script

text: One of the key problems with a Phoenician derivation is the lack of evidence for historical contact with Phoenicians in the relevant period. Bühler explained this by proposing that the initial borrowing of Brahmi characters dates back considerably earlier than the earliest known evidence, as far back as 800 BCE, contemporary with the Phoenician glyph forms that he mainly compared. Bühler cited a near-modern practice of writing Brahmic scripts informally without vowel diacritics as a possible continuation of this earlier abjad-like stage in development.


title: Brahmi script

text: The weakest forms of the Semitic hypothesis are similar to Gnanadesikan's trans-cultural diffusion view of the development of Brahmi and Kharoṣṭhī, in which the idea of alphabetic sound representation was learned from the Aramaic-speaking Persians, but much of the writing system was a novel development tailored to the phonology of Prakrit.


title: Brahmi script

text: Another evidence cited in favor of Persian influence has been the Hultzsch proposal in 1925 that the Prakrit/Sanskrit word for writing itself, "lipi" is similar to the Old Persian word "dipi", suggesting a probable borrowing. A few of the Ashoka edicts from the region nearest the Persian empire use "dipi" as the Prakrit word for writing, which appears as "lipi" elsewhere, and this geographic distribution has long been taken, at least back to Bühler's time, as an indication that the standard "lipi" form is a later alteration that appeared as it diffused away from the Persian sphere of influence. Persian "dipi" itself is thought to be an Elamite loanword.


title: Brahmi script

text: Falk's 1993 book "Schrift im Alten Indien" is a study on writing in ancient India, and has a section on the origins of Brahmi. It features an extensive review of the literature up to that time. Falk sees the basic writing system of Brahmi as being derived from the Kharoṣṭhī script, itself a derivative of Aramaic. At the time of his writing, the Ashoka edicts were the oldest confidently dateable examples of Brahmi, and he perceives in them "a clear development in language from a faulty linguistic style to a well honed one" over time, which he takes to indicate that the script had been recently developed. Falk deviates from the mainstream of opinion in seeing Greek as also being a significant source for Brahmi. On this point particularly, Salomon disagrees with Falk, and after presenting evidence of very different methodology between Greek and Brahmi notation of vowel quantity, he states "it is doubtful whether Brahmi derived even the basic concept from a Greek prototype". Further, adds Salomon, in a "limited sense Brahmi can be said to be derived from Kharosthi, but in terms of the actual forms of the characters, the differences between the two Indian scripts are much greater than the similarities".


title: Brahmi script

text: Falk also dated the origin of Kharoṣṭhī to no earlier than 325 BCE, based on a proposed connection to the Greek conquest. Salomon questions Falk's arguments as to the date of Kharoṣṭhī and writes that it is "speculative at best and hardly constitutes firm grounds for a late date for Kharoṣṭhī. The stronger argument for this position is that we have no specimen of the script before the time of Ashoka, nor any direct evidence of intermediate stages in its development; but of course this does not mean that such earlier forms did not exist, only that, if they did exist, they have not survived, presumably because they were not employed for monumental purposes before Ashoka".


title: Brahmi script

text: Unlike Bühler, Falk does not provide details of which and how the presumptive prototypes may have been mapped to the individual characters of Brahmi. Further, states Salomon, Falk accepts there are anomalies in phonetic value and diacritics in Brahmi script that are not found in the presumed Kharoṣṭhī script source. Falk attempts to explain these anomalies by reviving the Greek influence hypothesis, a hypothesis that had previously fallen out of favor.


title: Brahmi script

text: Hartmut Scharfe, in his 2002 review of Kharoṣṭī and Brāhmī scripts, concurs with Salomon's questioning of Falk's proposal, and states, "the pattern of the phonemic analysis of the Sanskrit language achieved by the Vedic scholars is much closer to the Brahmi script than the Greek alphabet".


title: Brahmi script

text: As of 2018, Harry Falk refined his view by affirming that Brahmi was developed from scratch in a rational way at the time of Ashoka, by consciously combining the advantages of the pre-existing Greek script and northern Kharosthi script. Greek-style letter types were selected for their "broad, upright and symmetrical form", and writing from left to right was also adopted for its convenience. On the other hand, the Kharosthi treatment of vowels was retained, with its inherent vowel "a", derived from Aramaic, and stroke additions to represent other vowel signs. In addition, a new system of combining consonants vertically to represent complex sounds was also developed.


title: Brahmi script

text: The possibility of an indigenous origin such as a connection to the Indus script is supported by some Western and Indian scholars and writers. The theory that there are similarities to the Indus script was suggested by early European scholars such as the archaeologist John Marshall and the Assyriologist Stephen Langdon. G. R. Hunter in his book "The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and Its Connection with Other Scripts" (1934) proposed a derivation of the Brahmi alphabets from the Indus script, the match being considerably higher than that of Aramaic in his estimation. British archaeologist Raymond Allchin stated that there is a powerful argument against the idea that the Brahmi script has Semitic borrowing because the whole structure and conception is quite different. He at one time suggested that the origin may have been purely indigenous with the Indus script as its predecessor. However, Allchin and Erdosy later in 1995 expressed the opinion that there was as yet insufficient evidence to resolve the question.


title: Brahmi script

text: Today the indigenous origin hypothesis is more commonly promoted by non-specialists, such as the computer scientist Subhash Kak, the spiritual teachers David Frawley and Georg Feuerstein, and the social anthropologist Jack Goody. Subhash Kak disagrees with the proposed Semitic origins of the script, instead stating that the interaction between the Indic and the Semitic worlds before the rise of the Semitic scripts might imply a reverse process. However, the chronology thus presented and the notion of an unbroken tradition of literacy is opposed by a majority of academics who support an indigenous origin. Evidence for a continuity between Indus and Brahmi has also been seen in graphic similarities between Brahmi and the late Indus script, where the ten most common ligatures correspond with the form of one of the ten most common glyphs in Brahmi. There is also corresponding evidence of continuity in the use of numerals. Further support for this continuity comes from statistical analysis of the relationship carried out by Das. Salomon considered simple graphic similarities between characters to be insufficient evidence for a connection without knowing the phonetic values of the Indus script, though he found apparent similarities in patterns of compounding and diacritical modification to be "intriguing". However, he felt that it was premature to explain and evaluate them due to the large chronological gap between the scripts and the thus far indecipherable nature of the Indus script.


title: Brahmi script

text: The main obstacle to this idea is the lack of evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation around 1500 BCE and the first widely accepted appearance of Brahmi in the 3rd or 4th centuries BCE. Iravathan Mahadevan makes the point that even if one takes the latest dates of 1500 BCE for the Indus script and earliest claimed dates of Brahmi around 500 BCE, a thousand years still separates the two. Furthermore, there is no accepted decipherment of the Indus script, which makes theories based on claimed decipherments tenuous. A promising possible link between the Indus script and later writing traditions may be in the megalithic graffiti symbols of the South Indian megalithic culture, which may have some overlap with the Indus symbol inventory and persisted in use up at least through the appearance of the Brahmi and scripts up into the third century CE. These graffiti usually appear singly, though on occasion may be found in groups of two or three, and are thought to have been family, clan, or religious symbols. In 1935, C. L. Fábri proposed that symbols found on Mauryan punch-marked coins were remnants of the Indus script that had survived the collapse of the Indus civilization.


title: Brahmi script

text: Another form of the indigenous origin theory is that Brahmi was invented "ex nihilo", entirely independently from either Semitic models or the Indus script, though Salomon found these theories to be wholly speculative in nature.


title: Brahmi script

text: Pāṇini (6th to 4th century BCE) mentions "lipi", the Indian word for writing scripts in his definitive work on Sanskrit grammar, the "Ashtadhyayi". According to Scharfe, the words "lipi" and "libi" are borrowed from the Old Persian "dipi", in turn derived from Sumerian "dup". To describe his own Edicts, Ashoka used the word "Lipī", now generally simply translated as "writing" or "inscription". It is thought the word "lipi", which is also orthographed "dipi" in the two Kharosthi-version of the rock edicts, comes from an Old Persian prototype "dipî" also meaning "inscription", which is used for example by Darius I in his Behistun inscription, suggesting borrowing and diffusion.


title: Brahmi script

text: Scharfe adds that the best evidence is that no script was used or ever known in India, aside from the Persian-dominated Northwest where Aramaic was used, before around 300 BCE because Indian tradition "at every occasion stresses the orality of the cultural and literary heritage", yet Scharfe in the same book admits that "a script has been discovered in the excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization that flourished in the Indus valley and adjacent areas in the third millennium B.C. The number of different signs suggest a syllabic script, but all attempts at decipherment have been unsuccessful so far. Attempts by some Indian scholars to connect this undeciphered script with the Indian scripts in vogue from the third century B.C. onward are total failures."


title: Brahmi script

text: Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador to the Mauryan court in Northeastern India only a quarter century before Ashoka, noted "... and this among a people who have no written laws, who are ignorant even of writing, and regulate everything by memory." This has been variously and contentiously interpreted by many authors. Ludo Rocher almost entirely dismisses Megasthenes as unreliable, questioning the wording used by Megasthenes' informant and Megasthenes' interpretation of them. Timmer considers it to reflect a misunderstanding that the Mauryans were illiterate "based upon the fact that Megasthenes rightly observed that the laws were unwritten and that oral tradition played such an important part in India."


title: Brahmi script

text: Some proponents of the indigenous origin theories question the reliability and interpretation of comments made by Megasthenes (as quoted by Strabo in the "Geographica" XV.i.53). For one, the observation may only apply in the context of the kingdom of "Sandrakottos" (Chandragupta). Elsewhere in Strabo (Strab. XV.i.39), Megasthenes is said to have noted that it was a regular custom in India for the "philosopher" caste (presumably Brahmins) to submit "anything useful which they have committed to writing" to kings, but this detail does not appear in parallel extracts of Megasthenes found in Arrian and Diodorus Siculus. The implication of writing per se is also not totally clear in the original Greek as the term "συντάξῃ" (source of the English word "syntax") can be read as a generic "composition" or "arrangement", rather than a written composition in particular. Nearchus, a contemporary of Megasthenes, noted, a few decades prior, the use of cotton fabric for writing in Northern India. Indologists have variously speculated that this might have been Kharoṣṭhī or the Aramaic alphabet. Salomon regards the evidence from Greek sources to be inconclusive. Strabo himself notes this inconsistency regarding reports on the use of writing in India (XV.i.67).


title: Brahmi script

text: Kenneth Norman (2005) suggests that Brahmi was devised over a longer period of time predating Ashoka's rule:


title: Brahmi script

text: He also notes that the variations seen in the Asokan edicts would be unlikely to have emerged so quickly if Brahmi had a single origin in the chancelleries of the Mauryan Empire. He suggests a date of not later than the end of the 4th century for the development of Brahmi script in the form represented in the inscriptions, with earlier possible antecedents.


title: Brahmi script

text: Jack Goody (1987) had similarly suggested that ancient India likely had a "very old culture of writing" along with its oral tradition of composing and transmitting knowledge, because the Vedic literature is too vast, consistent and complex to have been entirely created, memorized, accurately preserved and spread without a written system.


title: Brahmi script

text: Opinions on this point, the possibility that there may not have been any writing scripts including Brahmi during the Vedic age, given the quantity and quality of the Vedic literature, are divided. While Falk (1993) disagrees with Goody, while Walter Ong and John Hartley (2012) concur, not so much based on the difficulty of orally preserving the Vedic hymns, but on the basis that it is highly unlikely that Panini's grammar was composed. Johannes Bronkhorst (2002) takes the intermediate position that the oral transmission of the Vedic hymns may well have been achieved orally, but that the development of Panini's grammar presupposes writing (consistent with a development of Indian writing in c. the 4th century BCE).


title: Brahmi script

text: Several divergent accounts of the origin of the name "Brahmi" (ब्राह्मी) appear in history. The term "Brahmi" (बाम्भी in original) appears in Indian texts in different contexts. According to the rules of the Sanskrit language, it is a feminine word which literally means "of Brahma" or "the female energy of the Brahman". In popular Hindu texts such as the "Mahabharata", it appears in the sense of a goddess, particularly for Saraswati as the goddess of speech and elsewhere as "personified Shakti (energy) of Brahma, the god of Hindu scriptures Veda and creation". Later Chinese Buddhist account of the 6th century CE also supports its creation to the god Brahma, though Monier Monier-Williams, Sylvain Lévi and others thought it was more likely to have been given the name because it was moulded by the Brahmins.


title: Brahmi script

text: Alternatively, some Buddhist sutras such as the "Lalitavistara Sūtra" (possibly 4th century CE), list "Brāhmī" and "Kharoṣṭī" as some of the sixty-four scripts the Buddha knew as a child. Several sutras of Jainism such as the "Vyakhya Pragyapti Sutra", the "Samvayanga Sutra" and the "Pragyapna Sutra" of the Jain Agamas include a list of 18 writing scripts known to teachers before the Mahavira was born, the first one being "Bambhi" (बाम्भी) in the original Prakrit, which has been interpreted as "Bramhi". The Brahmi script is missing from the list of 18 scripts in the surviving versions of two later Jaina Sutras, namely the "Vishesha Avashyaka" and the "Kalpa Sutra". Jain legend recounts that 18 writing scripts were taught by their first Tirthankara Rishabhanatha to his daughter Bambhi (बाम्भी); she emphasized बाम्भी as the main script as she taught others, and therefore the name Brahmi for the script comes after her name. There is no early epigraphic proof for the expression "Brahmi script". Ashoka himself when he created the first known inscriptions in the new script in the 3rd century BCE, used the expression "Dhaṃma Lipi" (Prakrit in the Brahmi script: 𑀥𑀁𑀫𑀮𑀺𑀧𑀺, "Inscriptions of the Dharma") but this is not to describe the script of his own Edicts.


title: Brahmi script

text: The earliest known full inscriptions of Brahmi are in Prakrit, dated to be from the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE, particularly the Edicts of Ashoka, c. 250 BCE. Prakrit records predominate the epigraphic records discovered in the Indian subcontinent through about the 1st century CE. The earliest known Brahmi inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the few discovered in Ayodhya, Ghosundi and Hathibada (both near Chittorgarh). Ancient inscriptions have also been discovered in many North and Central Indian sites, occasionally in South India as well, that are in hybrid Sanskrit-Prakrit language called "Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit". These are dated by modern techniques to between the 1st and 4th centuries CE. Surviving ancient records of the Brahmi script are found as engravings on pillars, temple walls, metal plates, terracotta, coins, crystals and manuscripts.


title: Brahmi script

text: One of the most important recent developments regarding the origin of Brahmi has been the discovery of Brahmi characters inscribed on fragments of pottery from the trading town of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, which have been dated between the sixth to early fourth century BCE. Coningham et al. in 1996, stated that the script on the Anuradhapura inscriptions is Brahmi, but stated that the language was a Prakrit rather than a Dravidian language. The historical sequence of the specimens was interpreted to indicate an evolution in the level of stylistic refinement over several centuries, and they concluded that the Brahmi script may have arisen out of "mercantile involvement" and that the growth of trade networks in Sri Lanka was correlated with its first appearance in the area. Salomon in his 1998 review states that the Anuradhapura inscriptions support the theory that Brahmi existed in South Asia before the Mauryan times, with studies favoring the 4th century BCE, but some doubts remain whether the inscriptions might be intrusive into the potsherds from a later date. Indologist Harry Falk has argued that the Edicts of Ashoka represent an older stage of Brahmi, whereas certain paleographic features of even the earliest Anuradhapura inscriptions are likely to be later, and so these potsherds may date from after 250 BCE.


title: Brahmi script

text: More recently in 2013, Rajan and Yatheeskumar published excavations at Porunthal and Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu, where numerous both Tamil-Brahmi and "Prakrit-Brahmi" inscriptions and fragments have been found. Their stratigraphic analysis combined with radiocarbon dates of paddy grains and charcoal samples indicated that inscription contexts date to as far back as the 6th and perhaps 7th centuries BCE. As these were published very recently, they have as yet not been commented on extensively in the literature. Indologist Harry Falk has criticized Rajan's claims as "particularly ill-informed"; Falk argues that some of the earliest supposed inscriptions are not Brahmi letters at all, but merely misinterpreted non-linguistic Megalithic graffiti symbols, which were used in South India for several centuries during the pre-literate era.


title: Brahmi script

text: The calligraphy of the Brahmi script remained virtually unchanged from the time of the Maurya Empire to the end of the 1st century BCE. Around this time, the Indo-Scythians ("Northern Satraps"), after their establishment in northern India introduced "revolutionary changes" in the way Brahmi was written. In the 1st century BCE, the shape of Brahmi characters became more angular, and the vertical segments of letters were equalized, a phenomenon which is clearly visible in coin legends and made the script visually more similarly to the Greek script. In this new typeface, the letter were "neat and well-formed". The probable introduction of ink and pen writing, with the characteristic thickenned start of each stroke generated by the usage of ink, was reproduced in the calligraphy of stone inscriptions by the creation of a triangle-shaped form at the beginning of each stroke. This new writing style is particularly visible in the numerous dedicatory inscriptions made in Mathura, in association with devotional works of art. This new calligraphy of the Brahmi script was adopted in the rest of the subcontinent of the next half century. The "new-pen-style" initiated a rapid evolution of the script from the 1st century CE, with regional variations starting to emerge.


title: Brahmi script

text: Besides a few inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic (which were only discovered in the 20th century), the Edicts of Ashoka were written in the Brahmi script and sometimes in the Kharoshthi script in the northwest, which had both become extinct around the 4th century CE, and were yet undeciphered at the time the Edicts were discovered and investigated in the 19th century.


title: Brahmi script

text: Inscriptions of the 6th century CE in late Brahmi were already deciphered in 1785 by Charles Wilkins, who published an essentially correct translation of the Gopika Cave Inscription written by the Maukhari king Anantavarman. Wilkins seems to have relied essentially on the similarities with later Brahmic scripts, such as the script of the Pala period and early forms of Devanagari.


title: Brahmi script

text: Early Brahmi however remained unreadable. Progress resumed in 1834 with the publication of proper facsimiles of the inscriptions on the Allahabad pillar of Ashoka, notably containing Edicts of Ashoka as well as inscriptions by the Gupta Empire ruler Samudragupta.


title: Brahmi script

text: James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the East India Company, started to analyse the inscriptions and made deductions on the general characteristics of the early Brahmi script essentially relying on statistical methods. This method, published in March 1834, allowed him to classify the characters found in inscriptions, and to clarify the structure of Brahmi as being composed of consonantal characters with vocalic "inflections". He was able to correctly guess four out of five vocalic inflections, but the value of consonants remained unknown. Although this statistical method was modern and innovative, the actual decipherment of the script would have to wait until after the discovery of bilingual inscriptions, a few years later.


title: Brahmi script

text: The same year, in 1834, some attempts by Rev. J. Stevenson were made to identify intermediate early Brahmi characters from the Karla Caves (circa 1st century CE) based on their similarities with the Gupta script of the Samudragupta inscription of the Allahabad pillar (4th century CE) which had just been published, but this led to a mix of good (about 1/3) and bad guesses, which did not permit proper decipherment of the Brahmi.


title: Brahmi script

text: The next major step towards deciphering the ancient Brahmi script of the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE was made in 1836 by Norwegian scholar Christian Lassen, who used a bilingual Greek-Brahmi coin of Indo-Greek king Agathocles and similarities with the Pali script to correctly and securely identify several Brahmi letters. The matching legends on the bilingual coins of Agathocles were:


title: Brahmi script

text: James Prinsep was then able to complete the decipherment of the Brahmi script. After acknowledging Lassen's first decipherment, Prinsep used a bilingual coin of Indo-Greek king Pantaleon to decipher a few more letters. James Prinsep then analysed a large number of donatory inscriptions on the reliefs in Sanchi, and noted that most of them ended with the same two Brahmi characters: "𑀤𑀦𑀁". Prinsep guessed correctly that they stood for """", the Sanskrit word for "gift" or "donation", which permitted to further increase the number of known letters. With the help of Ratna Pâla, a Singhalese Pali scholar and linguist, Prinsep then completed the full decipherment of the Brahmi script. In a series of results that he published in March 1838 Prinsep was able to translate the inscriptions on a large number of rock edicts found around India, and provide, according to Richard Salomon, a "virtually perfect" rendering of the full Brahmi alphabet.


title: Brahmi script

text: Ashokan inscriptions are found all over India and a few regional variants have been observed. The Bhattiprolu alphabet, with earliest inscriptions dating from a few decades of Ashoka's reign, is believed to have evolved from a southern variant of the Brahmi alphabet. The language used in these inscriptions, nearly all of which have been found upon Buddhist relics, is exclusively Prakrit, though Kannada and Telugu proper names have been identified in some inscriptions. Twenty-three letters have been identified. The letters "ga" and "sa" are similar to Mauryan Brahmi, while "bha" and "da" resemble those of modern Kannada and Telugu script.


title: Brahmi script

text: Tamil-Brahmi is a variant of the Brahmi alphabet that was in use in South India by about 3rd century BCE, particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Inscriptions attest their use in parts of Sri Lanka in the same period. The language used in around 70 Southern Brahmi inscriptions discovered in the 20th century have been identified as a Prakrit language.


title: Brahmi script

text: In English, the most widely available set of reproductions of Brahmi texts found in Sri Lanka is "Epigraphia Zeylanica"; in volume 1 (1976), many of the inscriptions are dated from the 3rd to 2nd century BCE.


title: Brahmi script

text: Unlike the edicts of Ashoka, however, the majority of the inscriptions from this early period in Sri Lanka are found above caves. The language of Sri Lanka Brahmi inscriptions has been mostly been Prakrit though some Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions have also been found, such as the Annaicoddai seal. The earliest widely accepted examples of writing in Brahmi are found in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka.


title: Brahmi script

text: The Khuan Luk Pat inscription discovered in Thailand is in Tamil Brahmi script. Its date is uncertain and has been proposed to be from the early centuries of the common era. According to Frederick Asher, Tamil Brahmi inscriptions on potsherds have been found in Quseir al-Qadim and in Berenike, Egypt which suggest that merchant and trade activity was flourishing in ancient times between India and the Red Sea region. Additional Tamil Brahmi inscription has been found in Khor Rori region of Oman on an archaeological site storage jar.


title: Brahmi script

text: Brahmi is usually written from left to right, as in the case of its descendants. However, an early coin found in Eran is inscribed with Brahmi running from right to left, as in Aramaic. Several other instances of variation in the writing direction are known, though directional instability is fairly common in ancient writing systems.


title: Brahmi script

text: Brahmi is an abugida, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, while vowels are written with obligatory diacritics called "mātrā"s in Sanskrit, except when the vowels begin a word. When no vowel is written, the vowel is understood. This "default short a" is a characteristic shared with Kharosthī, though the treatment of vowels differs in other respects.


title: Brahmi script

text: Special conjunct consonants are used to write consonant clusters such as or . In modern Devanagari the components of a conjunct are written left to right when possible (when the first consonant has a vertical stem that can be removed at the right), whereas in Brahmi characters are joined vertically downwards.


title: Brahmi script

text: Vowels following a consonant are inherent or written by diacritics, but initial vowels have dedicated letters. There are three "primary" vowels in Ashokan Brahmi, which each occur in length-contrasted forms: /a/, /i/, /u/; long vowels are derived from the letters for short vowels. There are also four "secondary" vowels that do not have the long-short contrast, /e:/, /ai/, /o:/, /au/. Note though that the grapheme for /ai/ is derivative from /e/ in a way which parallels the short-long contrast of the primary vowels (historically they were /ai/ and /a:i/). However, there are only nine distinct vowel diacritics, as short is understood if no vowel is written. The initial vowel symbol for /au/ is also apparently lacking in the earliest attested phases, even though it has a diacritic. Ancient sources suggest that there were either 11 or 12 vowels enumerated at the beginning of the character list around the Ashokan era, probably adding either "aṃ" or "aḥ". Later versions of Brahmi add vowels for four syllabic liquids, short and long /ṛ/ and /ḷ/. Chinese sources indicate that these were later inventions by either Nagarjuna or Śarvavarman, a minister of King Hāla.


title: Brahmi script

text: It has been noted that the basic system of vowel marking common to Brahmi and Kharosthī, in which every consonant is understood to be followed by a vowel, was well suited to Prakrit, but as Brahmi was adapted to other languages, a special notation called the "virāma" was introduced to indicate the omission of the final vowel. Kharoṣṭhī also differs in that the initial vowel representation has a single generic vowel symbol that is differentiated by diacritics, and long vowels are not distinguished.


title: Brahmi script

text: The collation order of Brahmi is believed to have been the same as most of its descendant scripts, one based on Shiksha, the traditional Vedic theory of Sanskrit phonology. This begins the list of characters with the initial vowels (starting with "a"), then lists a subset of the consonants in five phonetically related groups of five called "vargas", and ends with four liquids, three sibilants, and a spirant. Thomas Trautmann attributes much of the popularity of the Brahmic script family to this "splendidly reasoned" system of arrangement.


title: Brahmi script

text: Punctuation can be perceived as more of an exception than as a general rule in Asokan Brahmi. For instance, distinct spaces in between the words appear frequently in the pillar edicts but not so much in others. ("Pillar edicts" refers to the texts that are inscribed on the stone pillars oftentimes with the intention of making them public.) The idea of writing each word separately was not consistently used.


title: Brahmi script

text: In the early Brahmi period, the existence of punctuation marks is not very well shown. Each letter has been written independently with some occasional space between words and longer sections.


title: Brahmi script

text: In the middle period, the system seems to be developing. The use of a dash and a curved horizontal line is found. A lotus (flower) mark seems to mark the end, and a circular mark appears to indicate the full stop. There seem to be varieties of full stop.


title: Brahmi script

text: In the late period, the system of interpunctuation marks gets more complicated. For instance, there are four different forms of vertically slanted double dashes that resemble "//" to mark the completion of the composition. Despite all the decorative signs that were available during the late period, the signs remained fairly simple in the inscriptions. One of the possible reasons may be that engraving is restricted while writing is not.


title: Brahmi script

text: Brahmi is generally classified in three main types, which represent three main historical stages of its evolution over nearly a millennium:


title: Brahmi script

text: Early "Ashokan" Brahmi (3rd–1st century BCE) is regular and geometric, and organized in a very rational fashion:


title: Brahmi script

text: Early Ashokan Brahmi was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0.


title: Brahmi script

text: The Unicode block for Brahmi is U+11000–U+1107F. It lies within the Supplementary Multilingual Plane. As of June 2022 there are two non-commercially available fonts that support Brahmi, namely Noto Sans Brahmi commissioned by Google which covers almost all the characters, and Adinatha which only covers Tamil Brahmi. Segoe UI Historic, tied in with Windows 10, also features Brahmi glyphs.


title: Brahmi script

text: The Sanskrit word for Brahmi, ब्राह्मी (IAST "Brāhmī") in the Brahmi script should be rendered as follows: .


title: Brahmi script

text: The Brahmi script was the medium for some of the most famous inscriptions of ancient India, starting with the Edicts of Ashoka, circa 250 BCE.


title: Brahmi script

text: In a particularly famous Edict, the Rummindei Edict in Lumbini, Nepal, Ashoka describes his visit in the 21st year of his reign, and designates Lumbini as the birthplace of the Buddha. He also, for the first time in historical records, uses the epithet "Sakyamuni" (Sage of the Shakyas), to describe the Buddha.


title: Brahmi script

text: The Heliodorus pillar is a stone column that was erected around 113 BCE in central India in Vidisha near modern Besnagar, by Heliodorus, an ambassador of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas in Taxila to the court of the Shunga king Bhagabhadra. Historically, it is one of the earliest known inscriptions related to the Vaishnavism in India.


title: Brahmi script

text: Middle Brahmi or "Kushana Brahmi" was in use from the 1st-3rd centuries CE. It is more rounded than its predecessor, and introduces some significant variations in shapes. Several characters (r̩ and l̩), classified as vowels, were added during the "Middle Brahmi" period between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, in order to accommodate the transcription of Sanskrit:


title: Brahmi script

text: Over the course of a millennium, Brahmi developed into numerous regional scripts. Over time, these regional scripts became associated with the local languages. A Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta Empire, sometimes also called "Late Brahmi" (used during the 5th century), which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the Middle Ages, including the Siddhaṃ script (6th century) and Śāradā script (9th century).


title: Brahmi script

text: Southern Brahmi gave rise to the Grantha alphabet (6th century), the Vatteluttu alphabet (8th century), and due to the contact of Hinduism with Southeast Asia during the early centuries CE, also gave rise to the Baybayin in the Philippines, the Javanese script in Indonesia, the Khmer alphabet in Cambodia, and the Old Mon script in Burma.


title: Brahmi script

text: Also in the Brahmic family of scripts are several Central Asian scripts such as Tibetan, Tocharian (also called slanting Brahmi), and the one used to write the Saka language.


title: Brahmi script

text: The Brahmi script also evolved into the Nagari script which in turn evolved into Devanagari and Nandinagari. Both were used to write Sanskrit, until the latter was merged into the former. The resulting script is widely adopted across India to write Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi and its dialects, and Konkani.


title: Brahmi script

text: The arrangement of Brahmi was adopted as the modern order of Japanese kana, though the letters themselves are unrelated.


title: Brahmi script

text: Some authors have theorized that some of the basic letters of hangul may have been influenced by the 'Phags-pa script of the Mongol Empire, itself a derivative of the Tibetan alphabet, a Brahmi script (see Origin of Hangul). However, one of the authors, Gari Ledyard, on whose work much of this theorized connection rests, cautions against giving 'Phags-pa much credit in the development of Hangul:


title: Grand tourer

text: A grand tourer (GT) is a type of car that is designed for high speed and long-distance driving, due to a combination of performance and luxury attributes. The most common format is a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive two-door coupé with either a two-seat or a 2+2 arrangement. Grand tourers are most often the coupé derivative of luxury saloons or sedans.


title: Grand tourer

text: The term is a near-calque from the Italian language phrase "gran turismo" which became popular in the English language from the 1950s, evolving from fast touring cars and streamlined closed sports cars during the 1930s.


title: Grand tourer

text: The grand touring car concept originated in Europe in the early 1950s, especially with the 1951 introduction of the Lancia Aurelia B20 GT, and features notable luminaries of Italian automotive history such as Vittorio Jano, Enzo Ferrari and Johnny Lurani. Motorsports became important in the evolution of the grand touring concept, and grand touring entries are important in endurance sports-car racing. The grand touring definition implies material differences in performance, speed, comfort, and amenities between elite cars and those of ordinary motorists.


title: Grand tourer

text: In the post-war United States, manufacturers were less inclined to adopt the "ethos of the GT car", preferring to build cars "suited to their long, straight, smooth roads and labor-saving lifestyles" with wide availability of powerful straight-six and V8 engines in all price-ranges like the 1955-1965 Chrysler 300. Despite this, the United States, enjoying early post-war economic expansion, became the largest market for European grand-touring cars, supplying transportation for movie stars, celebrities and the jet set; notably the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (imported by Max Hoffman), the Jaguar XK120, and the Ferrari "berlinettas" (imported by Luigi Chinetti). Classic grand-touring cars from the post-war era especially, have since become valuable cars among wealthy collectors. Within ten years, grand touring cars found success penetrating the new American personal luxury car market,


title: Grand tourer

text: The terms "grand tourer", ""gran turismo"", ""grande routière"", and "GT" are among the most misused terms in motoring. The grand touring designation generally "means motoring at speed, in style, safety, and comfort". "Purists define ""gran turismo"" as the enjoyment, excitement and comfort of open-road touring."


title: Grand tourer

text: According to Sam Dawson, news editor of "Classic Cars", "the ideal is of a car with the ability to cross a continent at speed and in comfort yet provide driving thrills when demanded" and it should exhibit the following:


title: Grand tourer

text: Grand tourers emphasize comfort and handling over straight-out high performance or ascetic, spartan accommodations. In comparison, sports cars (also a "much abused and confused term") are typically more "crude" compared to "sophisticated Grand Touring machinery". However, the popularity of using GT for marketing purposes has meant that it has become a "much misused term, eventually signifying no more than a slightly tuned version of a family car with trendy wheels and a go-faster stripe on the side".


title: Grand tourer

text: Historically, most GTs have been front-engined with rear-wheel drive, which creates more space for the cabin than mid-mounted engine layouts. Softer suspensions, greater storage, and more luxurious appointments add to their appeal.


title: Grand tourer

text: The "GT" abbreviation—and variations thereof—are often used as model names. However, some cars with GT in the model name are not actually grand touring cars.


title: Grand tourer

text: There have also been several classes of racing cars called GT. The Group GT3 regulations for modified road cars have been used for various racing series worldwide since 2006. The Group GT1 regulations were used for the fastest category of sports car racing from 1994 to 2001.


title: Grand tourer

text: The inclusion of "grand tourer", "gran turismo", "GT" or similar in the model name does not necessarily mean that the car is a grand tourer since several manufacturers have used the terms for the marketing of cars that are not grand tourers.