Brief History of Tangsa script

History

The script has been taught in a handwritten form by the late Mr. Lakhum Mossang over the past 30 years. His first draft of the inventory letters, containing 73 symbols. Lakhum Mossang taught the letters by numbers. He also produced a number of hand-written documents with traditional songs and a traditional prayer , both as examples for his students and to show the community as a whole how a script like this could be used to preserve culture.

Since at least 2003

Lakhum Mossang has been discussing with community organisations and with the Government of Arunachal Pradesh about how the script can be promoted so as to give the Tangsa community more access to literacy and the protection of their culture.

Until around 2012, the script was only used in handwriting by Mr Lakhum Mossang and a small band of his devoted students, all of them speakers of Muishvung (Mossang). From around 2012, the development of a font began, firstly by a PhD student, Ms Karen Parker. This font that has subsequently been revised and overhauled and included in the ‘Private Use’ area of the Unicode by Dr. Kellen Parker van Dam, a former student of Stephen Morey now based at the University of Zürich. An earlier version of the font was used to produce the first printed document in the script, a document prepared by the Tangsa Script Development Committee to distribute at the Pangsau Pass festival in January 2020.
The preparation of the primer was a request of the Arunachal Pradesh Directorate of Elementary Education (DEE). The script was submitted to the DEE in April 2020 and in August 2020, the members of the Tangsa Script Development Committee were asked by the Directorate of Elementary Education to produce these teaching materials