Braille Lipi: The Hindi Braille Alphabet Chart

Braille lipi (ब्रेल लिपि) means "braille script", and in India it usually refers to Bharati Braille, the braille used for Hindi and the other major Indian languages. It uses the same six-dot cell as braille everywhere, read left to right, but assigns the cells to the sounds of Indian scripts, so that, as far as possible, the same sound has the same cell in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil or Gujarati. क (ka) is ⠅, dots 1 and 3, and नमस्ते (namaste) is ⠝⠍⠈⠎⠞⠑.

Below: the full chart for Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Nepali), how vowel signs and consonant clusters work, numbers, and example words.

Key points

• Bharati Braille is the unified braille for Indian languages: one cell per sound, shared across scripts.
• Like Devanagari, a consonant on its own carries the vowel a: ⠅ alone is ka.
• Vowel signs (matras) are written as the full vowel after the consonant, even when the print sign goes before it: कि (ki) is ⠅⠊, k then i.
• A consonant without a vowel, as in a cluster, takes the halant sign, dot 4 (⠈), before it.
• Numbers use the number sign, dots 3, 4, 5 and 6, followed by the letters for 1 to 0, as in English braille.
• Our chart follows the Standard Bharati Braille Codes published by India's National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities (draft of December 2024), cross-checked against UNESCO's World Braille Usage and the liblouis tables.

The six-dot cell

Every braille character, in any language, uses the same six positions: dots 1, 2 and 3 down the left column, and 4, 5 and 6 down the right. A character is named by its raised dots. If the cell is new to you, start with what braille is.

Vowels (svar)

The vowel signs (matras) use the same cells as the full vowels: the sign ि has the cell of इ, and ी the cell of ई.

Consonants (vyanjan)

Two common clusters have their own cells:

A note on फ (pha)

India's 2024 standard chart and UNESCO's World Braille Usage (2013) both give फ as dots 2, 3 and 5 (⠖). The Hindi table in liblouis, the open-source braille library used by screen readers such as NVDA, still has dots 1, 2 and 4 (⠋), the cell of English f. If your screen reader or braille display shows ⠋ for फ, that is the reason. Our chart follows the national standard.

Signs

How vowel signs and clusters work

Devanagari is an abugida: each consonant letter carries the vowel a, and other vowels are written as signs attached to the consonant. Bharati Braille keeps that idea but writes everything in a straight line:

1. A consonant alone means consonant + a. ⠅ is क, ka.
2. Any other vowel is written in full after the consonant, even if in print the sign goes before it: कि (ki) is ⠅⠊ and की (kī) is ⠅⠔.
3. When the vowel a is followed by another vowel, it is written out, so कई (kaī) is ⠅⠁⠔, k–a–ī, and does not get confused with की.
4. A consonant with no vowel gets the halant before it: in ब्रेल (brel), ब् is ⠈⠃, then र, े and ल.

Numbers

Numbers use the number sign, dots 3, 4, 5 and 6 (⠼), followed by the cells of the first ten letters of the braille alphabet, the same as in English braille: १२३ (123) is ⠼⠁⠃⠉. How numbers work in detail: braille numbers.

Words in Hindi braille

These were produced with liblouis 3.39.0 and checked against the national chart cell by cell.

The same cell, different languages

Braille is not one alphabet: each language decides what each cell means. The cell ⠮ (dots 2, 3, 4 and 6) is ध (dha) in Hindi, the word "the" in contracted English braille, and é in Spanish braille. More examples in braille in other languages.

Frequently asked questions

What is braille lipi?

"Lipi" means script, so braille lipi is braille writing. In India it usually means Bharati Braille, the braille system for Hindi and other Indian languages.

How do you write namaste in braille?

नमस्ते is ⠝⠍⠈⠎⠞⠑: न, म, the halant before स, then त and the vowel ए.

Is Hindi braille the same as English braille?

It uses the same six-dot cell and the same number sign, and some cells overlap, but many cells mean different things, and Hindi braille has cells for sounds English does not have. Hindi braille is also written letter by letter, without English contractions.

Who invented Bharati Braille?

When India became independent, eleven different braille scripts were in use in different regions and languages. By 1951 a single national standard, Bharati Braille, had been settled on, and it has since been adopted by Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh (Wikipedia). Its base is Louis Braille's six-dot cell, as in every language.