Tamil Grantha Keyboard

A phone keyboard usually gives you the 247 letters of modern Tamil and stops there. The letters used in Sanskrit loanwords, the old Tamil digits, and the small calendar and account-book marks are harder to find. This page puts them on one keyboard, grouped so you can see what each one is for.

Choose a consonant at the top to see its 13 written forms: the inherent vowel, the 11 vowel signs and the pulli. Every key inserts at the cursor in the text box. Hover over a key with a mouse, or focus it with the keyboard, and the inspector shows its Unicode name and code points.

The fixed ஸ்ரீ key is there because the ligature is common in names and honorifics and takes four characters to build by hand. The symbols below the consonant forms cover the rest of the Tamil block: digits, number signs, calendar signs, accounting signs and ௐ.

Tamil and Sanskrit have lived side by side for centuries, and Tamil writers needed a way to write Sanskrit sounds that native Tamil letters do not distinguish. The result is a small set of Grantha letters:ஜ for the “j” sound, ஶ for “sh”, ஷ for the retroflex “ṣ”, ஸ for “s”, and ஹ for “h”. They behave like Tamil consonants: each takes a vowel sign or a pulli, so ஜ plus ி givesஜி.

They are not part of the traditional 247-letter count. A school alphabet usually lists 12 vowels, 18 consonants, 216 vowel-consonant letters and the aytham. Grantha letters sit outside that set, and a good letter counter reports them separately, as this site’s Tamil word counter does.

The letter ஶ is newer than the others. Unicode added it in version 4.1 (2005), and some older keyboards and fonts still lack it. If a word looks almost right but one letter refuses to appear, the font may be the cause. The rest of the set has been stable for much longer.

Common Words

ஜன்னல் (window), ஜனவரி (January), ஸ்ரீ(Sri), ஸ்திரம் (stability), ஷர்ட் (shirt) andஹோட்டல் (hotel) all use Grantha letters. Names are another common place:ராஜேஷ், ஸ்ரீதேவி and ஹரிணி.

If you already use a Tamil keyboard layout, you do not need this page for the letters. These are the keys for the main Grantha characters. The Tamil99,InScript and typewriter pages let you practise them on screen.

The Tamil block includes more than letters. The digits ௦ to ௯are the old Tamil numerals, still printed in calendars and used in inscriptions. ௰,௱ and ௲ stand for ten, one hundred and one thousand.

The calendar signs are compact labels: ௳ for day, ௴ for month and௵ for year. They appear beside numbers in traditional almanacs. The accounting signs come from ledgers: ௶ debit, ௷ credit, ௸as above or ditto, ௹ rupee and ௺ number.

Do not confuse ௹ with ₹. The Tamil rupee sign is an older accounting mark; the Indian rupee sign is the modern currency symbol. ௐ, the Tamil Om, is a sacred sign rather than a letter or a numeral.

Copying Symbols Safely

These characters are standard Unicode, so they survive copy and paste into Word, Google Docs, WhatsApp and email. A font that lacks a glyph may show an empty box, even though the character is still there. If that happens, change the font rather than retyping the symbol. Our Tamil fonts guidelists fonts with wide Tamil coverage.