Sarada is called Saraswati or Saraswati Mukha , the face of the Goddess of Speech,  Saraswati  Mukha. The script is peculiar to Kashmir. Evolved as a direct descendant of the Horiuzi script of the Brahmi alphabet in the 8th century. However, it is not known with certainty as to when the mutated Horiuzi script received the appellation Sarada. But what is certain that it must have taken not less than a century before the script developed into the Sarada proper. Ever since, over the centuries to as late as until the beginning of the 20th Century, it has been exclusively used by the Kashmiri Pandits to produce tomes of manuscripts dealing with works on Religion, Art, History, Language, Literature, Philosophy & Astrology etc.  However it is a sad fact that not many manuscripts in Sharada survive today. The main reason for this sordid affair is the result of several historical convulsions that Kashmir underwent following the advent of Islam there in the 14th Century. Not only history consumed the major portion of these manuscript but some have also been lost to the ravages of time and neglect. And whatever survived from the large repository remained in obscurity and anonymity of the Kashmiri Pandit household until the Dogras came on the scene in Kashmir in 1846 AD. However, until the dawn of the 4 th quarter of 20th Century the surviving Sarada manuscripts, written both on paper and birch bark, remained but only of the proud possessions of their writers and owners almost like sacred amulets. Till then, the world was oblivious of them.