Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Basic Multilingual Plane
     
         (BMP) The first plane defined in
        {Unicode}/{ISO 10646}, designed to include all {scripts} in
        active modern use.  The BMP currently includes the Latin,
        Greek, Cyrillic, Devangari, hiragana, katakana, and Cherokee
        scripts, among others, and a large body of mathematical,
        {APL}-related, and other miscellaneous {characters}.  Most of
        the {Han} {ideographs} in current use are present in the BMP,
        but due to the large number of ideographs, many were placed in
        the {Supplementary Ideographic Plane}.
     
        {Unicode home (http://www.unicode.org)}.
     
        (2002-03-19)