[INDOLOGY] Etymology of the word"Devnagari"

[Stefan Baums]

Dear Alakendu, Dan and Andrew,

there is an article on the topic by Walter Maurer:

   Walter H. Maurer. 1976. On the Name Devanāgarī. Journal of the
   American Oriental Society 96, 101–104.

According to Maurer, the older and more widely current form of the
name is Nāgarī, first attested in the 11th century in al-Biruni
(as, apparently, “Nāgara”). Whether this referred to “city script”
in general (in contrast to what?) or to a particular city remains
unclear. The oldest attestation of the extended form Devanāgarī
that Maurer could find appears in 1776 in Halhed’s Code of the
Gentoo Laws, possibly to “sanctify” the script and/or to
distinguish it from lesser varieties of the script family.

All best,
Stefan

-- 
Stefan Baums, Ph.D.
Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie
Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universität München