Tibetan and Himalayan Scripts

The Tibetan and Himalayan Scripts page is the central index to all of THDL's resources on the history and contemporary situation of the Tibetan language in all its written forms. It also provides documentation of other related "Himalayan" fonts, such as Devanagari (the Nepali font) and Lentsa (an ornamental Indic script often used in Tibetan texts). The Tibetan language in literary form has a rich history dating back at least to the seventh century. Over the centuries it has been the dynamic cauldron in which one of the world's largest and most vital bodies of premodern literature has developed. This includes the only extant copies in translation of much of the Indian Buddhist canon now lost in their original form, a huge body of indigenous Buddhist compositions in a great range of literary genres, and a broad spectrum of other literary materials. This includes a thriving publishing industry that utilized wood blocks for printing, as well as an impressive calligraphic tradition spanning many quite distinct scripts. In the twentieth century, Tibetan literature has given birth to a vibrant body of modern literature, including creative fiction, academic writing, and periodicals. In addition, modern print technologies have been utilized to give birth to a massive array of international format book publications of classical and modern literature. Over the last three decades Tibetan computing has also become a thriving field with a modest but vibrant development of fonts, software and digital tools. With the imminent arrival of Unicode, a global standard for Tibetan script in digital environments, Tibetan computing is set to come into full maturity, and it is hoped help drive a renaissance in Tibetan literacy and literature.

Central to all of these developments is the scripts of Tibetan, which are the medium enabling the composition, dissemination and reading of all forms of literary Tibetan. This site is dedicated to those scripts, and the Tibetan men and women who over the centuries have created, used and read them with passion, intelligence and committment to their own culture and language.