Devanāgarī (देवनागरी), sometimes called Nagari for short, is a
writing system of about 52 primary letters which combine to form
syllables. Devanagari was designed for the Prakrit language c.
13th century CE, an intermediate language between Sanskrit and
Hindi, and later elaborated for Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi,
Nepali, and other languages. Devanagari writing is often likened
to a washing line: a line is drawn above the words, and the
letters are hung out to dry below the line. A break in the line
indicates a break between words. Devanagari is classified as an
abugida, which means that each character represents a syllable,
not a single letter as in English. If the character is a
consonant, the implicit vowel following it is assumed to be a,
unless modified by special vowel signs added above, below, after
or even before the character. Each vowel has two forms: an
"isolated" form when beginning a word or following another
vowel; and another used within a word by use of diacritics
called मात्रा mātra. As an exampl