IIT graduate girl digitises almost-extinct Odisha tribal script

Soni Salma Priyadarshini, an IIT-Mumbai graduate, has finished the digitisation of Saura script, one of the most complicated tribal scripts. Saura is the mother tongue of around 3 lakh tribal people inhabiting parts of southern Odisha and north Andhra Pradesh. Saura language and script are on the verge of extinction for want of patronage.

Rayagada (Odisha): After years of research, Soni Salma Priyadarshini, an IIT student hailing from Odisha's Rayagada district has successfully digitised the tribal Saura script to promote the tribal culture of the state.

The script will promote the Saura culture and help the tribal students pursue studies in Saura medium.

Soni said she has digitised the Saura script in association with Prof Girish Dalvi of IIT-Mumbai.

Following digitisation of the script, digitised textbooks will be published for teaching in Anganwadi centres and primary schools.

In a special interaction with ETV Bharat, Soni said, "With the support of my teacher Prof Girish Dalvi, I have completed the digitisation of the language. However, more work needs to be done on the size of the fonts of the script. Once it is complete, members of the Saura tribe can communicate with others on WhatsApp."

"I was doing a job in a big company in Germany. Though I was getting a hefty salary, I left the job and came back to Rayagada to do further research on Saura script. As the coding is necessary for the publication of the textbooks, I will complete it within a few days. The publication of the textbooks will benefit more than 30,000 Saura tribals of Ganjam, Gajapati and Rayagada districts," Soni said.

"At home, Sauras speak their mother tongue which is an Austro-Asiatic language. It belongs to the class of the Munda family. Now it is mostly an oral language and is not written or read extensively. Once it’s fully computerised, it would be widely used and Sauras will be able to keep alive their identity as a tribe and contribute to the movement for documenting endangered languages and cultures," Soni added.

Soni joined IIT-Mumbai in 2014 to pursue her study in industrial design. During her study, she had done a project on typography and did a research on the digitisation of Saura script prepared by a Sabar scholar Pandit Mangei Gomang of Rayagada district.

Speaking about Pandit Mangei Gomang, Soni's father Badal Kumar Ta said, "Gomang is a great scholar. He had developed a written script by producing 25 letters and 10 digits in 1936. But due to lack of encouragement the written tribal language was not enhanced. I am feeling proud of my daughter and her efforts are reflecting in a total flawless manner."

Ronit Sabar, a Saura language scholar said, "Since the education policy- 2020 formulated presently by the central government has given much importance to the study of mother tongue, Soni’s work would be extremely helpful for the state government as well as the Saura tribal community."

Notably, Saura is the mother tongue of around 3 lakh tribal people inhabiting parts of southern Odisha and north Andhra Pradesh. Saura language and script are on the verge of extinction for want of patronage.

It is pertinent to be mentioned here that out of 62 tribal communities in Odisha, the spoken languages of five communities have been digitised so far.