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Old Sundanese was developed based on the Pallava script of India, and was used from the 14th until the 18th centuries. The last manuscript written in Old Sundanese script was Carita Waruga Guru. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, Sundanese was mostly spoken and not written. Javanese and Pegon scripts were used to write Sundanese during this period. In 1996, the government of West Java announced a plan to introduce an official Sundanese script, and in October 1997, the Old Sundanese script was chosen and renamed to Aksara Sunda.
The standardized script has 32 basic characters, consisting of 7 aksara swara (independent vowels): a, é, i, o, u, e, and eu, and 23 aksara ngalagéna (consonants with vowel a): ka-ga-nga, ca-ja-nya, ta-da-na, pa-ba-ma, ya-ra-la, wa-sa-ha, fa-va-qa-xa-za.

The additional five sounds to the ngalagena characters were added to fulfill the purpose of the Sundanese script as a tool for recording the development of the Sundanese language, especially by absorption of foreign words and sounds. However, the glyphs for the new characters are not new, but reuse several variants in the old Sundanese script, for example: the glyphs for fa and va are variants of Old Sundanese pa, the glyphs for qa and xa are variants of Old Sundanese ka, and the glyph for za is a variant of Old Sundanese ja.

There are also rarangkén or attachments for removing, modifying, or adding vowel or consonant sounds to the base characters. 13 rarangkén based on the position to the base can be categorized into three groups: (1) five rarangkén above the base characters, (2) three rarangkén below the base characters, and (3) five rarangkén inline the base characters. In addition, there are glyphs for number characters, from zero to nine.