Chandas


 

For new Siddhanta font see here
 

 

Chandas - Devanagari Unicode Open Type font (ttf) with the largest ligature set. The font contains 4347 glyphs: 325 half-forms, 960 half-forms context-variations, 2743 ligature-signs. It is designed especially for Vedic and Classical Sanskrit but can also be used for Hindi, Nepali and other modern Indian languages. The font includes Vedic accents and many additional signs and provides maximal support for Devanagari script.

In version 1.1 were added Latin and Cyrillic characters and corresponding Open Type tables for Sanskrit transliteration. 

In version 1.2 some Vedic characters were added and the bug with u-mAtrA was corrected. Now the font is compatible with Itranslator-2003 and Sanskrit2003 font.

Now font is provided in two versions - Chandas and Uttara. Chandas font represents Southern (most commonly used today) style of Devanagari script. And Uttara font represents Northern style of Devanagari Script. These styles are sometimes also called Bombay (Southern, contemporary) and Calcutta (Northern, old) pen families accordingly. Uttara is today the only Devanagari OTF font which supports Northern variations in simple glyphs and in ligatures.

Chandas font is updated. Version 1.3 now works correctly in Windows Vista and MS Office 2007. Uttara font update is coming soon.
 

Download fonts -

chandas.ttf (version 1.3  2,6 Mb) Southern Style -

uttara.ttf (version 1.2 2,5 Mb) Northern Style -

 

Other files:

Encoding Table - chandas-encoding.pdf

Ligature Examples - saMyoga-pattra.pdf

Sample texts -

श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता - bhagavadgItA.pdf

पाणिनीयधातुपाठः - dhAtupATha.pdf

अष्ठाध्यायी - pANini1-4.pdf

Some examples from Vedic texts - vedic.pdf

गणपत्यथर्वशीर्षम् (input by Prasannaa Venkatesan) - ganapatiatharvashirsham.pdf

 

Volt-project file (for font designers) - chandas-volt.zip (ver 1.2) uttara-volt.zip

 

Chandas Devanagari IME (Input Method and Keyboard Layout for Devanagari) - chandas-ime.zip

Help file - chandas-ime-help.pdf

Vedic Inscript IME (Devanagari Inscript IME with additional Vedic signs) - vedic-inscript.zip

 

Contact with designer - bayaryn@gmail.com

 

Links to other Devanagari Unicode fonts can be found here -

http://devanaagarii.net/
http://www.travelphrases.info/languages/sanskrit-classical.htm
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts-south-asian.html#devanagari

http://www.sanskritweb.net/itrans/
http://www.skytower.org/~ernstjtremel/

 

Chandas font, Uttara font, Chandas Devanagari IME, Chandas Volt project, Uttara Volt project are released under GNU General Public License.

 

Many thanks to Mr. Ulrich Stiehl, Mr. Ernst Tremel, Mr. Alok Kumar, bhavAn nArasiMha.
 


Mihail Bayaryn

 

last updated 01.04.2008 (links updated 26.12.2010)