The ancestral script behind nearly every writing system native to the Indian subcontinent — the script Ashoka's edicts were carved in, and the root from which Devanagari itself descended.
लगभग ३री शताब्दी ई.पू. से · attested from circa 3rd century BCE
First clearly attested in Ashokan inscriptions of the 3rd century BCE, though likely older, Brahmi was written left to right and organized systematically around consonant-vowel combinations, a structure that shaped the writing systems descended from it across South and Southeast Asia.
Nearly all major scripts used across India today, Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, and many more, along with scripts used historically across Southeast Asia for Thai, Burmese, Khmer, and Javanese, descend from Brahmi, making it one of the most consequential writing systems in world history despite being largely unfamiliar by name today.