Sourashtra Letters (Saurashtra Script)

Sourashtra (also spelled Saurashtra, and called Palkar or Patnuli) is the language of a community of silk weavers in Tamil Nadu, above all in Madurai. Its own script, written ꢱꣃꢬꢵꢰ꣄ꢜ꣄ꢬ (Sauraashtra), belongs to the same Brahmic family as Devanagari, Gujarati and Tamil: each consonant letter carries the vowel a, other vowels are added as signs after it, and the letters run left to right.

The alphabet follows the classic Indian order. First come the vowels ꢂ a, ꢃ ā, ꢄ i, ꢅ ī, ꢆ u, ꢇ ū, then the rare ꢈ ꢉ ꢊ ꢋ (vocalic r and l, kept for Sanskrit words), then ꢌ e, ꢍ ē, ꢎ ai, ꢏ o, ꢐ ō, ꢑ au. Unlike Devanagari, the script distinguishes short and long e and o, as Tamil does.

The consonants follow in five rows of five from the throat to the lips: ꢒ ka, ꢓ kha, ꢔ ga, ꢕ gha, ꢖ ṅa; ꢗ ca to ꢛ ña; the retroflex ꢜ ṭa to ꢠ ṇa; ꢡ ta to ꢥ na; ꢦ pa to ꢪ ma. After them come ꢫ ya, ꢬ ra, ꢭ la, ꢮ va, the sibilants ꢯ śa, ꢰ ṣa, ꢱ sa, then ꢲ ha and ꢳ ḷa. There are no capital or small letters: searches for Sourashtra small letters find the same shapes.

Vowel signs, the haaru ꢴ and the visible virama ꣄

To write a syllable, a consonant takes a vowel sign: ꢒ ka, ꢒꢵ kā, ꢒꢶ ki, ꢒꢷ kī, ꢒꢸ ku, ꢒꢹ kū, ꢒꢾ ke, ꢒꢿ kē, ꢒꣀ kai, ꢒꣁ ko, ꢒꣂ kō, ꢒꣃ kau. Every sign is written after the consonant in Unicode, so you type and copy letter first, sign second, exactly as with Tamil or Hindi.

The haaru ꢴ is the script's own invention. Sourashtra has breathy sounds such as nh, mh, rh and lh that most Indian scripts have no letters for, and the haaru written after a nasal or liquid such as n, m, r or l marks them: ꢥꢴ nha, ꢪꢴ mha, ꢬꢴ rha, ꢭꢴ lha. It is why the language can be written precisely in its own script and only approximately in Tamil letters.

The virama ꣄ removes the vowel from a consonant. Where Devanagari stacks consonants into conjuncts, Saurashtra writing keeps them side by side with the virama visible, so kṣa is ꢒ꣄ꢰ and the name of the language is ꢱꣃꢬꢵꢰ꣄ꢜ꣄ꢬ, with two viramas you can see. The anusvara ꢀ and candrabindu ꣅ mark nasal sounds and the visarga ꢁ a final breath, as in other Indian scripts.

How to type the Saurashtra script and get a Sourashtra font

Few phone or computer keyboards ship with a Saurashtra layout, so the quickest way to write a word or a name is to copy the letters from this page: tap a letter, then paste with Ctrl+V, Cmd+V or a long-press and Paste. Build syllables in typing order, consonant first and then its vowel sign or virama.

If the letters show as empty boxes, the device has no font for the script. Google's free Noto Sans Saurashtra covers the whole block; install it on a computer, or use it on a website, and the text on this page will display. Text in the script is ordinary Unicode, so it works in messages, documents and web pages once a font is present.

HTML: the script sits in the Unicode block U+A880 to U+A8DF: ꢂ for ꢂ, ꢒ for ꢒ, ꢴ for the haaru ꢴ, ꣄ for the virama ꣄, ꣐ to ꣙ for the digits ꣐–꣙ and ꣎ for the danda ꣎.

Saurashtra numbers and punctuation

The script has its own digits, ꣐ ꣑ ꣒ ꣓ ꣔ ꣕ ꣖ ꣗ ꣘ ꣙, used with place value like 0–9: ꣑꣐ is 10, ꣑꣐꣐ is 100 and 2026 is ꣒꣐꣒꣖. In everyday writing today, numbers are usually written with 0–9, as in Tamil.

In traditional prose, the danda ꣎ is a text delimiter; the double danda ꣏ is used in poetry, as in other Indian scripts. Commas, question marks and quotation marks are taken over from English writing, and money is written in Indian rupees, ₹.

Where Sourashtra is spoken and how it is written today

CLDR estimates about 410,000 literate, functional Sourashtra users in India 🇮🇳. Madurai has the largest community, and there are others in Tamil Nadu towns such as Salem, Thanjavur, Kumbakonam, Paramakudi and Dindigul. By the community's own history, their ancestors came from the Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat, more than 1,500 km to the north, and moved south over centuries as silk weavers, settling in Madurai under the Nayak kings.

Sourashtra is an Indo-Aryan language: its oldest roots are shared with Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi, while centuries in the south have filled it with words from Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. Most speakers are also bilingual in Tamil, and much Sourashtra writing today appears in Tamil letters with extra marks for sounds Tamil lacks, or in Devanagari or Latin letters. The Saurashtra script is kept alive by community books, classes and enthusiasts, and Unicode support means it can now be typed and shared like any other script.