Representation of Grantha Script in the Unicode Standard

Unicode is the defacto industry standard for representation of multilingual text in computer/ electronic media. Indian scripts are also included in the standard for representation of 22 constitutionally recognized Indian languages.

DIT is the voting member of the Unicode Consortium to ensure adequate representation of Indian scripts in the Unicode Standard. Lot of our ancient knowledge is written on the palm leaves in different scripts, which are not in vogue today. With the objective of preserving our ancient knowledge and to bring it on electronic media, TDIL Programme, DIT is taking initiative to encode these historic and archive scripts in Unicode Standard, apart from the constitutionally recognized 22 languages. Grantha is one such script in which many religious books were written.

Dept. of IT prepared proposal for encoding of the Grantha in the Unicode Standard in consultation with the Government of Tamil Nadu, qualified Sanskrit and Grantha scholars, experienced manuscriptologists and IT experts. The Unicode Technical Committee has recommended encoding of 82 characters for representation of Grantha in the future version of Unicode Standard.

The code chart showing various characters and symbols used in Grantha script is available at
Link of Code chart