11 Facts About Makasar script

Makasar script, known as Ukiri' Jangang-jangang or Old Makasar script, is a historical Indonesian Writing system that was used in South Sulawesi to write the Makassarese language between the 17th and 19th centuries until it was supplanted by the Lontara Bugis script.

Makasar script is an abugida which consists of 18 basic characters.

Scholars generally believe that the Makasar script was used before South Sulawesi received significant Islamic influence around the 16th century AD, based on the fact that Makasar script uses the abugida system based on the Brahmi script rather than the Arabic script which became commonplace in South Sulawesi later on.

The visual similarity of the South Sumatran characters such as the Rejang script and the Makasar script has led some experts to suggest a relationship between the two scripts.

The Makasar script was originally thought to be the ancestor of the Lontara script, but both are now considered separate branches of an ancient prototype that is assumed to be extinct.

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The oldest surviving example of the Makasar script is the signature of the delegates from the Sultanete of Gowa in the Treaty of Bongaya from 1667, which is stored in the National Archives of Indonesia.

One of these patturiolongs that was written in the Makasar script and have been researched by experts is the Chronicle of Gowa which describes the history of the kings of Gowa from the founding of the Kingdom of Gowa to the reign of Sultan Hasanuddin in the 17th century AD.

The Makasar script is known to have only two original punctuation marks: passimbang and a section ending mark.

Passimbang functions like a period or comma in the Latin Makasar script by dividing the text into chunks that are similar to stanzas or sentences, while section ending marks are used to split the text into chapter-like units.

Makasar script has been added to the Unicode Standard in June 2018 on Version 11.

Font for Makasar script based on the unicode block were first created under the name Jangang-jangang in early 2020.