Maldivian writing systems

Manuscripts used by Maldivian Buddhist monks were probably written in a script that slowly evolved into a characteristic Dhivehi form.

Few of those ancient documents have been discovered and the early forms of the Maldivian script are only found etched on a few coral rocks and copper plates.

The oldest attested inscription bears a clear resemblance to South Indian epigraphical records of the sixth-eighth centuries, written in local subtypes of the Brahmi script.

The letters on later inscriptions are clearly of the cursive type, strongly reminding of the medieval scripts used in Sri Lanka and South India such as Sinhala, Grantha and Vatteluttu.

Evēla can be seen in the Lōmāfānu (copper plate grants) of the 12th and 13th centuries and in inscriptions on coral stone (hirigā) dating back from the Maldive Buddhist period.

Even though long before that time Maldivian Buddhist monks had been writing and reading manuscripts in their language, older documents have not yet been discovered yet.

This script can be found on gravestones, old grants in paper and wood, and in some monuments, including the stone base of the pillars supporting the main structure of the ancient Friday Mosque in Malé.

British researcher H. C. P. Bell obtained an astrology book written in Divehi Akuru in Addu Atoll, in the south of Maldives, during one of his trips.

The first Thaana manuscripts are written in a crude early version of this script, where the Arabic numerals have not yet been slanted 45 degrees and still looked like numbers.

[5] The main reason why the Divehi Akuru were abandoned in favour of the Thaana script was owing to the need the learned Maldivians had to include words and sentences in Arabic while writing in the Dhivehi language.

The letter ṇaviyani (ޱ), representing the retroflex nasal /ɳ/, was abolished from official documents in 1950 by Mohamed Ameen, the president of Maldives.

In 1959, during Sultan Mohammed Farid's reign, former Prime Minister (and later President) Ibrahim Nasir expressed a wish to have a book written about the former Dhivehi script which by that time was largely forgotten by Maldivians.

Following this, Dhivehi Letin, an official Latin alphabet, was approved by the Maldivian government in 1976 and implemented by the administration.