Kirat Rai (also called Rai, Khambu Rai, Rai Barṇamālā and Kirat Khambu Rai) is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the Sumhung Lipi of 1920s, used to write the Bantawa language in the Indian state of Sikkim.[1] Kirat Rai is composed of 31 primary characters, including seven vowels (and seven related vowel diacritics), one of which (/a/) is inherent in all consonants, 31 consonants, a virama to cancel the inherent vowel, and a vowel carrier to be used in combination with the vowel diacritics for writing word-initial vowels.[2]
| Kirat Rai Rai Khambu Rai Rai Barṇamālā Kirat Khambu Rai | |
|---|---|
| Script type | |
Time period | 1920 – present |
| Languages | Bantawa |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Krai (396), Kirat Rai |
| Unicode | |
| U+16D40–U+16D7F (tentative) | |
History edit
Kirat Rai is part of the Brahmic family of scripts from India, Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia. Smriti Rai mentions that the Rai (Khambu) people, speakers of the Bantawa language, used to write with the Limbu (Sirijanga) script but created the Sumhung Lipi as the Limbu people started claiming the Limbu script.[3] Both Sumhung Lipi and Limbu script have descended from the Old Kirat Lipi. Sumhung Lipi was created by Tika Ram Rai in the 1920s for writing religious book called Sumhung. In 1969 Kripasalyan Rai of Gyalshing district reintroduced[4] and promoted Sumhung Lipi script as "Kripasalyan Lipi" through his book Rāī Akṣarko Barṇamālā.[1]
References edit
- ^ a b Mandal, Biswajit; Evans, Lorna. "Proposal to Encode Kirat Rai script in the Universal Character Set" (PDF). The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
- ^ "Kirat Rai". Scriptsource.org. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
- ^ Rai, Smriti (March 2016). "Significance of "thar" in the Social Structure of the Khambu Rais: Some Observations" (PDF). Journal of the Department of Sociology of North Bengal University. 3 (1): 148–160.
- ^ Pandey, Anshuman (2011-04-13). "Introducing the Khambu Rai Script" (PDF). DKUUG Standardizing. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-01-16. Retrieved 2023-11-10.