… scripts, from which derived the Tibetan and Khotanese systems. (Khotanese was also influenced by the Kharosthi script.) From the Tibetan script were derived the writing system of the Lepcha (Rong)—the aboriginal inhabitants of Sikkim, India—and the Passepa writing system of the Chinese Imperial chancery under the Yuan dynasty (1206–1368); the…

Tibetan is written in a script derived from that of Indian Gupta about 600 ce. It has a syllabary of 30 consonants and five vowels; six additional symbols are used in writing Sanskrit words. The script itself has four variations—dbu-can (primarily for Buddhist textbooks), dbu-med…

…the spoken dialects since the script was fixed, the Tibetans have never changed their system of writing. Thus, once the literary language and the various types of script have been mastered, the reader has immediate access to all literature of the 7th to the 20th centuries, though changes in style…