Marchen
Script details
See all script details: code, region, status and more
| Code | Marc |
| Script type | abugida |
| Region | Indic |
| Status | Historical |
| Direction | LTR |
| Baseline | unspecified |
| Case | no |
| White space | none |
| Complex behaviors | diacritics, contextual forms, complex positioning, required ligatures |
| OpenType code | marc |
| ISO 15924 Numeric Code / Key | 332 (alphasyllabic) |
Script description
Marchen, also called the Greater Mar or the Greater Beautiful script, is one of a group of related scripts used in the Tibetan Bön religion.
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It is used for writing the Zhang-zhung language, now preserved only in Bön literature, and occasionally for writing Tibetan. This script is not to be confused with the Marchung script, a related but separate script about which little is known beyond that it has been used in some other Bön texts.
Marchen writing employs similar principles to Tibetan; each consonant has a base form and a subjoined form which can be combined in vertical stacks to represent consonant clusters. There are also five vowel signs which can be attached to a base consonant or to a consonant stack; in the absence of one of these signs, consonants have an inherent /a/ vowel.
Languages that use this script
| Language | Writing System Code | Writing System Status | SLDR/CLDR locale | Regional variants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tibetan, Central | bo-Marc | in use | bo-Marc-CN (China) | |
| Zhang-Zhung | xzh-Marc | in use | xzh-Marc-CN (China) |
Unicode status
In The Unicode Standard, Marchen script implementation is discussed in Chapter 14: South and Central Asia-III — Ancient Scripts
.
Resources
- ScriptSource page for Marchen - all about scripts, languages, and writing systems
- Wikipedia article on Marchen