Sharing a common ancestry with Bengali oriya script is used in the eastern Indian state of Orissa for writing the Oriya language, as well as Sanskrit and a number of Dravidian and Munda languages. Oriya script descends from Brahmi script through the Kalinga script, its more recent ancestor. As with all Brahmi-derived Indic scripts oriya demonstrates the typical features of that model.¹ Its basic unit is the consonant-based syllable which embodies an inherent vowel. While it is structurally similar to Bengali script oriya script visually resembles the Southern Indic scripts whose rounded appearance is ascribed to being written with a needle on palm leaves.

Oriya is written horizontally from left to right and its basic set of symbols consists of 36 consonants and 16 vowels. At the beginning of a syllable, vowels appear in independent form. When used to replace the inherent vowel of a consonantal syllable, vowels appear in diacritic (or satellite) form before, after, above, below or surrounding the modified syllable. In many cases, consonant-vowel combinations may be written with special ligatures which break the predictable pattern. A group of consonants without intervening vowels form a 'consonant cluster' which can often be written with a special symbol called a 'conjunct', of which Oriya is known to have a large selection. Often such a cluster is written by attaching a reduced form of the secondary consonant to the primary one. Although there are several other regular schemes, in many cases the formation of a conjunct is idiosyncratic, so that its components are not readily recognizable. In Oriya script, the inherent vowel of a syllable is suppressed by a halanta which is a small diagonal stroke placed as a subscript on the syllable. Taking the shape of a half-circle diacritic with a dot above, the candrabindu indicates vowel nasalization. The presence of a nasal consonant is sometimes marked by a small superscript ring, the anusvara. Words are separated by a space and the end of a sentence is signaled by a vertical stroke. Oriya has a native set of symbols for numerals.

¹ For a fuller description of the features of Brahmi-derived scripts, see 'Devanagari'.

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