5 (number) - Evolution of The Glyph

Evolution of The Glyph

The evolution of our modern glyph for five cannot be neatly traced back to the Brahmin Indians quite the same way it can for 1 to 4. Later on the Indian Empires of Kushana and Gupta from India had among themselves several different glyphs which bear no resemblance to the modern glyph. The Nagari and Punjabi took these glyphs and all came up with glyphs that are similar to a lowercase "h" rotated 180°. The Ghubar Arabs transformed the glyph in several different ways, producing glyphs that were more similar to the numbers 4 or 3 than to the number 5. It was from those characters that the Europeans finally came up with the modern 5, though from purely graphical evidence, it would be much easier to conclude that our modern 5 came from the Khmer. The Khmer glyph develops from the Kushana/Ândhra/Gupta numeral, its shape looking like a modern day version with an extended swirled 'tail'

While the shape of the 5 character has an ascender in most modern typefaces, in typefaces with text figures the character usually has a descender, as, for example, in .