What is the ancient human-made Japanese Kana script?(1)

Japanese kana, including hiragana and katakana, are examples of derived scripts with a clear historical lineage. Here’s an overview:

• Created By: Japanese Buddhist monks and scribes.
• Date: ~8th–10th centuries AD.

Hiragana

• Origin: Derived from cursive forms of Chinese characters (specifically, a style called sōsho or “grass script”).
• Purpose: Used primarily by women in early Japan for personal writing, poetry, and letters, as men traditionally used Chinese characters (kanji) for formal texts.
• Attestation: Early texts like The Tale of Genji (11th century AD), written by Murasaki Shikibu, showcase the use of hiragana.

Katakana

• Origin: Developed from fragments of Chinese characters, extracted by Buddhist monks to annotate Chinese sutras for pronunciation and grammatical guidance.
• Purpose: Initially a scholarly tool but later adopted for foreign words, technical terms, and emphasis in modern Japanese.
• Attestation: Found in Buddhist texts and annotations from the Heian period (~9th century AD).

(To be continued)