The story of the Tigalari script which is going through it’s last days is very interesting. Some research says Brahmins who visited Kerala to study astrology and ayurvedic during ancient times brought this script back to coastal and malenad region of Karnataka. The idea behind that was Vedas and Shastras should not be easily accessible for commoners to keep their originality and sanctity. This shows some basic idea of the social status of those times. And since then it is widely used for only writing books. The language they used are various like Sanskrit, Kannada , Tulu .
I met a elderly havyak Brahmin , Ganapathi Shambhu Bhat of Honnavara who still writes in this script . He has many mantras written by his hand in Tigalari . He showed one of the books written in Tigalari by his hand. He says the script is almost dead . But he is doing everything to keep it alive. His son can also write in the script and he keep forcing others to learn too.
