Divehi Akuru "island letters" is a script formerly used to
write the Dhivehi language. Unlike the modern Thaana script, Divehi
Akuru has its origins in the Brahmi script and thus was written from left to right.
Divehi Akuru was separated into two variants, a more recent and an
ancient one and christened “Dives Akuru” and "Evēla Akuru" respectively
by Harry Charles Purvis Bell in the early 20th century.
Bell was British and studied Maldivian epigraphy when he retired from the colonial government service in Colombo.Bell wrote a monograph on the Archaeology, history and epigraphy of
the Maldives. He was the first modern scholar to study these ancient
writings and he undertook an extensive and serious research on the
available epigraphy. The division that Bell made based on the
differences he perceived between the two types of Dhivehi scripts is
convenient for the study of old Dhivehi documents.
The Divehi Akuru developed from the Grantha alphabet. The letters on old Inscriptions resemble the southern Grantha of the Pallava dynasty and Chola dynasty periods of South India.
However, this does not mean that the Maldives were dependent from those
kingdoms, for the Maldive Islands have been an independent nation
practically all along their history. There has been very little
interference, cultural or otherwise, from other neighboring kingdoms in
South India and Sri Lanka.
The early form of this script was also called Divehi Akuru by
Maldivians, but it was renamed Evēla Akuru "ancient letters" in a
tentative manner by H.C.P. Bell in order to distinguish it from the more
recent variants of the same script. This name became established and so
the most ancient form of the Maldive script is now known as Evēla
Akuru. The ancient name of the Evēla Akuru was Dīvī Grantha. This
is the script that evolved at the time when the Maldives was an
independent kingdom and it was still in use one century after the
conversion to Islam.
