Zanabazar Square

This script was created by Zanabazar, a famous Buddhist scholar at the end of the 17th century. It was also called a Mongolian horizontal square. The Zanabazar script was designed for writing in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Mongolian. It preceded the Soyombo script, also created by Zanabazar. The Zanabazar script was not popular with contemporaries. However, it was rediscovered in 1801.

The square Mongolian script was based on Tibetan. It is an abugida, like the whole Brahmi family. The sound /a/ is added to all consonant letters, which can be neutralised by virama. Other vowel sounds are marked by signs above and below the consonant symbol, except for one independent — 𑨀 .

The Zanazabar script was to be written horizontally, from left to right.