Grantha Script

Grantha is the script of Tamil Nadu and Kerala for writing Sanskrit. The Tamil script was made for Tamil and has no letters for many Sanskrit sounds (no voiced or aspirated stops, no sibilant set), so from the Pallava period onward Sanskrit texts in the Tamil country were written in a sister script with the full Sanskrit inventory: Grantha. Temple inscriptions on stone and copper plates, palm-leaf manuscripts of the Vedas, philosophy, grammar and medicine, and whole printed books into the twentieth century were written in it. The name itself is Sanskrit: grantha means a knot, then a bound book, from the thread knotted through a stack of palm leaves.

Scholars divide it into Pallava Grantha (from about the 4th century CE), Middle Grantha (from the Kuram copper plates of about 675 CE), Transitional Grantha (to about the 14th century) and Modern Grantha, the form on this page, whose oldest surviving manuscript is from the end of the 16th century. Modern Grantha has a squarer Brahmanic style used by Hindu scribes and a rounder Jain style used by Jains.

Today Grantha is a scholars' and priests' script rather than an everyday one. Tamil-speaking Hindu families still meet it in the Sanskrit part of wedding invitations, in the name written at a naming ceremony, in almanacs and last-rite notices, and in Vedic schools where the Veda is learnt from Grantha manuscripts. Devanagari has taken over most printed Sanskrit in the south, which is exactly why a complete, copyable Grantha chart is worth having.

How Grantha works: vowels, varga consonants and the virama

Grantha is an abugida written left to right. Every consonant letter carries an inherent a: 𑌕 is ka, 𑌮 is ma. A different vowel is written with a vowel sign attached to the consonant: 𑌕𑌾 kā, 𑌕𑌿 ki, 𑌕𑍁 ku, 𑌕𑍇 ke, 𑌕𑍋 ko. Two of these signs are two-part: 𑍋 o is 𑍇 plus 𑌾 around the consonant, and 𑍌 au is 𑍇 plus the au length mark 𑍗. The independent vowel letters 𑌅 𑌆 𑌇 𑌈 𑌉 𑌊 𑌋 𑍠 𑌌 𑍡 𑌏 𑌐 𑌓 𑌔 are used only where a vowel starts a word or syllable on its own.

The consonants come in the order every Sanskrit learner knows, the varga grid: five rows of five stops, each row one place of articulation, each column one manner. Velar 𑌕 𑌖 𑌗 𑌘 𑌙, palatal 𑌚 𑌛 𑌜 𑌝 𑌞, retroflex 𑌟 𑌠 𑌡 𑌢 𑌣, dental 𑌤 𑌥 𑌦 𑌧 𑌨 and labial 𑌪 𑌫 𑌬 𑌭 𑌮. Then the semivowels 𑌯 𑌰 𑌲 𑌵, the sibilants 𑌶 𑌷 𑌸 and 𑌹 ha. 𑌳 ḷa is the extra retroflex lateral needed for Vedic Sanskrit and for southern words.

The virama 𑍍 kills the inherent vowel, so 𑌕𑍍 is a bare k. Between two consonants it asks the font to form a conjunct: Grantha follows the same model as Telugu and Kannada, ligating where a traditional ligature exists and otherwise stacking the second consonant under the first, two deep in ordinary print and up to three deep in Vedic texts. 𑌕𑍍𑌷 kṣa and 𑌜𑍍𑌞 jña are the classic ligatures. The other signs are 𑌂 anusvara (nasalisation, as in 𑌸𑌂𑌸𑍍𑌕𑍃𑌤𑌮𑍍 saṃskṛtam), 𑌃 visarga (the final breath in 𑌨𑌮𑌃 namaḥ), 𑌁 candrabindu, 𑌽 avagraha for a vowel dropped in sandhi (𑌸𑍋𑌽𑌹𑌮𑍍 so'ham) and 𑍝 pluta for an extra-long drawn-out vowel.

Grantha, Tamil and Malayalam: the family resemblance

Grantha and the Tamil script grew up side by side from the same Pallava-era writing, and old manuscripts mix them freely: in Manipravalam, the literary blend of the two languages, Sanskrit words were written in Grantha and Tamil words in Tamil within the same line, sometimes within the same word. The traffic went the other way too. The letters that Tamil uses for Sanskrit loan sounds, ஜ ஶ ஷ ஸ ஹ and the ligature க்ஷ, are called Grantha letters in Tamil grammar because that is where they came from, and ஸ்ரீ śrī on every Tamil invitation is Grantha in Tamil dress. For the Tamil script itself see the Tamil Letters & Alphabet collection.

The Malayalam script is Grantha's direct descendant: Transitional Grantha in Kerala became Tulu-Malayalam, which split into Tigalari (the Tulu script) and the Malayalam script used today. Set 𑌕 𑌗 𑌮 next to Malayalam ക ഗ മ and the kinship is plain. The Malayalam Alphabets & Letters collection has the modern alphabet; this page is the reference for its ancestor. Further afield, the Pallava script that Grantha grew out of was carried across the Bay of Bengal, and the Khmer, Thai, Javanese and Balinese scripts descend from it.

Because the shapes are close, do not swap scripts in a text. A Grantha 𑌕 and a Tamil க or Malayalam ക are different Unicode characters; a search for one will not find the other, and a Sanskrit word spelled with Tamil letters loses its aspirates and voicing. Use the Grantha characters on this page for Grantha, and the Tamil or Malayalam collections for those scripts.

Vedic marks, Tamil digits and the dandas

Grantha carries a set of marks for the Veda. 𑍞 and 𑍟 are the Vedic anusvara and double anusvara, letter-sized nasal signs that appear in Vedic Sanskrit where the ordinary 𑌂 would be wrong. The small combining digits 𑍦 𑍧 𑍨 𑍩 𑍪 𑍫 𑍬 and combining letters 𑍰 𑍱 𑍲 𑍳 𑍴 are the svara marks of the Samaveda: the Samaveda is sung on numbered pitches, and the reciter reads the pitch of each syllable from the little figure written above it. Unicode places them centred over the syllable. The same set exists in Devanagari for northern Samaveda manuscripts. 𑌀, the combining anusvara above, and 𑌂 in its geminating sense are used for Prakrit texts, and 𑌻, the bindu below, is a nukta for writing Betta Kurumba and other southern languages in Grantha.

Grantha has no digits of its own in Unicode: the standard states that Grantha uses the Tamil digits ௦ ௧ ௨ ௩ ௪ ௫ ௬ ௭ ௮ ௯, and that the danda । and double danda ॥ that end verse lines are taken from the Devanagari block. They are included here so that a full Grantha text, a verse with its numbered lines, can be assembled from one page. 𑍐 om has its own character and is the usual way to open a text.

Fonts, keyboards and converters for Grantha

Grantha was added to Unicode in version 7.0 in June 2014, after a long dispute in which some Tamil organisations argued it should be unified with Tamil; Unicode kept it a separate script, sharing only the digits. Two characters followed in 8.0 (𑌀 and 𑍐) and one in 11.0 (𑌻). The block is U+11300 to U+1137F, in the supplementary planes, which means that no common operating system ships a Grantha font and most phones and browsers will show empty boxes until you install one. The free Noto Sans Grantha from Google covers the whole block with proper conjuncts; e-Grantamil is the scholars' alternative and adds the Tamil letters used alongside Grantha. Once a font is installed, text copied from this page displays and prints correctly.

No system keyboard layout comes with Grantha. The practical way to type it is to write the Sanskrit in a script you can type, Devanagari, Tamil or romanised IAST, and convert it with a transliteration tool such as Aksharamukha, which handles Grantha's conjuncts and Vedic marks. For a word or a line, copying from the chart above is faster: click a character to copy it, or copy a ready-made word from the combos below.