Unicode Block - Ol Chiki

Ol Chiki is the script used to write the Santali language, an Austroasiatic tongue spoken primarily in eastern India, and its encoded form preserves the unique letters designed by Pandit Raghunath Murmu in the 1920s. Unlike many Indic scripts, Ol Chiki is not derived from Brahmi, featuring its own distinct set of 30 letter symbols for consonants and vowels, along with digits and punctuation marks. The script’s name, meaning “writing” or “language of the Ol” (a sacred term), reflects its cultural significance, and its encoded characters support the phonetic needs of Santali, including its characteristic glottalized stops and vowel harmony. The assigned slots in the standard encoding system ensure that digital text in Santali can be rendered consistently across platforms, preserving the script for education, literature, and official use in regions like Odisha, West Bengal, and Jharkhand.