Tulu language, Tulu Script, and its Unicode
The untamed river
The Netravati (Nētrāvati) river is the lifeline of Tulunāḍ. It originates in the Western Ghats and before it eventually joins into the Arabian Sea, it flows through places like Dharmasthala, Ubār (Uppinangadi), Buntwal, and Kuḍla(Mangalore city). At Ubār, the river Netravati merges with the river Kumāradhāra.
Have you ever heard anyone from Kuḍla say that our river is Netravati, not the one at Ubār or Bantwal? Such claims thankfully are not made. It would be an absurd claim if anyone made it. Maybe in the early 20th century, people in Bantwal might have called it Bantwal sudæ (river) more than Netravati. But it is still the same river today.
A river flows, bends, and forms tributaries before it reaches its final destination. Wherever it flows, it earns new terms of endearment. It is free by nature, a free soul. It is humans who attempt to tame a free-flowing river by building damns. At times even changing its natural course.
Languages are born free
Languages are just like rivers. They are born at an unknown point of time in human history. They flow to new places as humans migrate and populate the whole planet. Often changing its course with modification of spoken words or earning new words with the influence of human interaction.
Most languages eventually undergo standardization with political decisions made by us — humans, just like how we build dams over rivers.
Tulu and its variance
Tulu language, to be honest, hasn’t truly undergone standardization. It is still very much like a river that is free, wild, and untamed.
The Tulu word for river is Sudæ as I said earlier. But many Tuluvas (Tulu speakers) say it as Tudæ. And even some more Tuluvas who call it Hudæ.
Tudæ, Sudæ, and Hudæ — beautifully capture the different dialects of Tulu, the untamed and free-flowing language.
Keeping aside the variance in words of the different dialects of the language at the moment, let us look at the name of the language itself.
I say it as Tulu (ತುಲು/तुलु ). But then, even Tul̥u (ತುಳು/तुळु) is also correct. If anyone says it is Tulu and not Tul̥u, or vice versa, they are wrong. Both exist and both are acceptable.
This is the kind of variance and diversity we see in Tulu today.
The script and truth are set in stone
Today there is no doubt that Tulu has a script. The proof lies in the stone inscriptions. The oldest specimen of Tulu script is not in palm-leaf manuscripts that have managed to survive today. It is in the stone inscriptions that have been discovered in this century. The language of the oldest stone inscription in the Tulu script is in the Tulu language. There is nothing that can change this fact.
Unfortunately, the natural flow of Tulu script was interrupted by us humans. Just like we build dams on rivers, we try to standardize and tame them for use with technical innovations like printing presses and typewriting.
Tulu script was never standardized for the printing press and typewriting. It was ignored and forgotten during the printing technology revolution. The short-sightedness of Basel Mission missionaries didn’t help them when they came across the Tulu script in the 19th century. They mistook it to be Malayalam or a variant of it. To support their missionary activities with the printing of religious literature they decided to use Kannada script for Tulu. This singular choice of the Basel Mission press marked the era of decline of the Tulu script.
Digital Era and Unicode
After nearly 150–200 years of a dark era, we are on the cusp of history again. The Tulu script has been revived and brought back to life after a lot of research by many unsung heroes.
It skipped the printing press era. But, in the digital era, we have Unicode, which assigns codes to display all characters of different scripts.
Almost every major language in India has a Unicode block assigned to its script. Tulu till date did not have one. Today, 10th September 2024, changes everything.
Unicode version 16.0 is released today and it has a block for the Tulu script. Over the last decade there have been many proposals to the Unicode for inclusion of a Tulu block. Many experts and even organizations like Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy (KTSA) came up with proposals.
The challenge that the Tulu script honestly faced for inclusion into Unicode was that, unlike other scripts that were tamed/standardized to support printing technology, the Tulu script was never standardized.
A script that was at one point in time taught exclusively via a traditional Guru-Śiṣya (teacher-disciple) system would naturally have undergone handwriting variations organically wherever it got practiced. Specimens of Tulu script in manuscripts and stone inscriptions would show variances. Each proposal to Unicode was in my opinion also an attempt to standardize a free script. Each author arrived at some common set of features for each character. Also, each proposal would have minor variances.
The script standardized by KTSA originally had traditional orthography when it was proposed earlier. Eventually, to this traditional Tulu script set, the characters that fully supported the spoken Tulu were added. KTSA also aimed to standardize the vowel diacritic marks (mātra/kāgunitha) for consonants. It also aimed to standardize how consonant clusters (samyuktākṣara/vottākṣara) would be formed. In this standardization, the focus was on less use of ligatures in writing style — meaning more disconnected use of letters with mātrās and disconnected consonants while forming samyuktākṣaras.
But, ligated samyuktākṣara and ligated mātras are still very much part of the traditional way of writing the Tulu script.
The Tulu script proposal that has seen the daylight today as the Unicode block for Tulu, is the proposal by Ms. Vaishnavi Murthy and Mr. Vinodh Rajan. Their emphasis was on the traditional orthography of Tulu script. Their proposal and Unicode block for Tulu is titled as Tulu-Tigalari.
A rose by any name is still a rose
Call it Tulu, Tulu-Tigalari, Traditional Tulu, or Modern Tulu, the truth is that the original characters set in these proposals are all from the unstandardized original Tulu script - the very script found in the oldest stone inscriptions written in the Tulu language.
A mere nomenclature doesn’t change this truth.
Tulu script after 200 years has got another opportunity to step into the future with a technological innovation after being sidelined in the earlier technological innovations of the 19th century.
Some may ponder over the fact that the current Tulu Unicode has only the traditional character set. Some of the modern and vital vowels for fully supporting modern spoken Tulu are missing in it. What to do about it?
Unicode luckily is not something that is set in stone. Languages like Latin and Arabic not only have one assigned Unicode block, but they also have many extension blocks to the original blocks that support all the additional characters that were added iteratively via proposals as extension blocks, or to the original blocks itself where the codes were pre-assigned for future additions.
Even Indian language scripts like Devanagari-Hindi, Tamil, and Meetei-Mayek (Manipuri) each have one Unicode block and additional extension blocks. The extension blocks were added in later versions of Unicode to support new characters.
Interesting to note here is the Meetei-Mayek Unicode block. The initial assignment of the Unicode block to Meitei-Mayek was the modern character set. The later extension block to Meitei-Mayek was their traditional/archaic Meitei character set.
The Tulu Unicode block finds itself in a similar situation to Meitei, isn’t it?
It is just that the traditional or base character set of the Tulu script has come out first? Just like Meitei, we need to add an extension block in future releases to add whatever modern character is missing now. Or to the original block itself where some codes are already pre-assigned for future inclusion. That’s all there is to it. No rocket science at all.
History rarely gives a second chance
Whether it is traditional or modern, it is still Tulu.
Tulu language speakers should not let go of this moment. We Tuluvas should start learning and writing in Tulu script, and also using the Tulu Unicode widely. We should all start using the Tulu script digitally in all forms of media. We should teach others also to use it. And probably write proposals to Unicode to add an extension block to the Tulu Unicode to support missing characters. Note, that everyone is allowed to write proposals to Unicode.
If Tuluvas knows the traditional orthography, they should make efforts to learn the modern styles. If they know the modern orthography, they should learn the traditional orthography which has come in legacy to us and has portions of our Tulu history recorded in Stone inscriptions.
If anyone says that modern Tulu is Tulu, and traditional Tulu is not Tulu or vice versa, then he or she would be repeating the historical blunders of the Basel Mission.
History seldom gives a second chance at redemption. This is your second chance, my dear Tuluva. Embrace it.
