𑂍𑂶𑂟𑂲

Kaithi — the scribes’ hand of the Gangetic plain

For four centuries the everyday script of Bihar and the United Provinces: deeds and court papers, ledgers and love letters — written fast, without ever lifting the pen for a head-line.

Learn the letters Convert & read documents

The alphabet

Kaithi is an abugida, a sister of Devanagari — not its child. Every consonant carries an inherent a; vowel signs (matras) change it. Tap any letter to hear its place in the system — Kaithi above, Devanagari beneath, romanization in italics.

Syllable builder — अक्षर बनाइए

Pick a consonant and a vowel sign. The font itself joins them, exactly as a scribe would.

Consonant

Vowel sign

𑂍 क ka

Kaithi has no head-line (shirorekha). What looks like a ruled line in old documents is the paper’s ruling — scribes hung the letters from it for show on the first line and wrote freely below. That economy of stroke is why courts chose it: it was simply faster.

The story

The name comes from Kāyastha — the scribal community of north India. Their hand became a script; the script carried the daily life of the Gangetic plain.

The descent

Born of Brahmi

Kaithi descends from ancient Brahmi through the Gupta and proto-Devanagari hands — the same ancestry as Devanagari. The two grew up side by side, sisters from one source; Kaithi is not a corruption of Devanagari but its own parallel line.

The scribes

A hand made for speed

The Kayastha scribes wrote for a living — and Kaithi shows it. No head-line, fewer strokes, letters that flow without lifting the pen. Grierson wrote that it could be set down with far more rapidity and ease than its rivals.

Three hands

One script, three voices

Three regional styles grew up across the plain: Tirhuti in Mithila — the most elegant; Bhojpuri in the west — the most legible; Magahi around Magadh — a mean between the two. Each district's scribes gave the letters their own swash.

Daily life

The script of the everyday

Bhojpuri, Magahi, Maithili and Awadhi were all written in Kaithi — village ledgers, family letters, folk epics and songs, the accounts of the mahajan and the notes of the village school.

Tools

Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded anywhere. The Kaithi ⇄ Devanagari mapping is derived from the Unicode Character Database, so conversion is exact and lossless.

Input — Kaithi or Devanagari, direction auto-detected

Output

Unmapped characters