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The
Ol Chiki script was invented by Pandit Raghunath Murmu in the first half
of the 20th century . The meaning of Ol Chiki is the writing symbol or the writing script. This script is also
known as Ol Cemet, Ol script, Ol ciki Script and also Ol. In Santali,Ol means writing and
Cemet means learning . So, Ol Cemet means The learning of writing. Indeed, Ol Cemet is the title of the book,
written by Pandit Raghunath Murmu for teaching the Ol Chiki to the beginners. Santali is
a language with its own special characteristics, and has a literature which dates back to the beginning of the 15th century
and since then, it has been in various phases of its development in the subsequent centuries. Language is an instrument of group culture and identity. The script is a mechanism to propagate and preserve a language,
which is necessary for the very survival of cultural communities. Naturally, he felt that Santals with their rich cultural
heritage and tradition, also need a separate script to preserve and promote their language. Towards this goal, he wrote over
150 books covering wide spectrum of subjects such as grammar, novels, drama, poetry, and story
in Ol Chiki as a part of his extensive programme for culturally upgrading the Santal community. Darege Dhan, Sidhu-Kanhu,
"Bidu Chandan" and "Kherwal Bir" are among the most acclaimed of his works.
Ol
Chiki is alphabetic, and does not share any of the syllabic properties of the other Indic scripts. It is used for writing
Santali which belongs to the Munda group languages of the Austro-Asiatic family. One of the interesting
feature of the Ol Chiki script is that it makes use of signs and symbols long familiar to the Santals. The very ingenuity
in shaping the symbols of the letters and arranging the letters in the script has been greatly helpful in transmission of
the script. A large number of words in the Santali language are derived from natural sounds. Letters of Ol Chiki script are
also derived from the physical environment and what surrounds the people - hills, rivers, trees, birds, bees, plough, sickle
- the list is endless
On commenting about Ol Chiki, Zide (1996) observes,
One ingenious - scientific and unique feature of Ol Cemet that certainly increases the efficiency of writing
Santali is the deglottalizing ohot This neatly preserves the morphophonemic relationship between the glottalized
and the voiced equivalent: The former occurs in words at certain word-internal preconsonantal junctures, whereas the latter
occurs prevocalically, but never morpheme-initially in these alterations. Thus ok is the name of a letter that represents both [k]and [g]. Two further diacritics include a horizontal loop added at
the top right of the character for aspiration of consonants, and a raised dot for vowel nasalization.
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