For as long as the Tiprasa people have told their stories, they have searched for a way to write them down in their own voice. The question of script is not merely technical — it is deeply tied to identity, sovereignty, and cultural survival.

The Kokborok script debate is centuries old. It is a story of loss, revival, political struggle, and quiet determination.

The Ancient Voice: Koloma

According to oral tradition and royal chronicles, Kokborok once had its own script — Koloma. By oral history, the language has been attested since at least the 1st century AD, when the historical record of the Tripuri kings first began to be written down. The royal priest and scholar Durlobendra Chontai is said to have used Koloma to record that history in the Rajratnakar — the chronicle later known, in its translated forms, as the Rajmala.

Koloma was tied to administration, ritual, and royal record-keeping — an indigenous writing system born from the land, language, and worldview of the Tiprasa people.

"A script is not just letters. It is the footprint of a civilization."

— Traditional Tiprasa saying

By around the 14th century, Koloma gradually fell out of use, and the original manuscripts are now considered lost. The Rajratnakar survived only because it was later translated — into Sanskrit by the Brahmins Sukreswar and Vaneswar, and then into Bengali in the 19th century. The Koloma original itself is no longer available. One popular folk story even blames a hungry goat for eating the manuscript on which the script was recorded. Whatever the truth, Koloma became a memory — a ghost script that lived on only in stories.

The Bengali Era

From the 19th century onward, as the Twipra Kingdom came under increasing Bengali influence, Kokborok began to be written in the Bengali script. This became the dominant writing system for official and literary purposes — and remains so in many contexts today.

The Bengali script did carry Kokborok literature forward. Radhamohan Thakur's grammar Kokborokma (1900) and the trilingual Tripur Kothamala (1906) were early milestones written within this tradition. But many felt the script imposed a foreign phonological logic on a Tibeto-Burman language. The mismatch between Bengali's abugida structure and Kokborok's own sound system would become a central point of the debate that followed.

The 20th Century: Modern Indigenous Experiments

The modern search for an indigenous script gathered momentum across the twentieth century and into the present. Several distinct attempts stand out:

Mid-20th century Early modern script efforts emerged, including a Tripuri script attributed to Alindralal Tripura — among the earliest attempts to give the language a fresh written form rooted in its own identity.
Late 20th century onward A wave of inventors across Tripura and Bangladesh proposed their own scripts — a sign of how deeply the community wished to see Kokborok written in a form of its own.
Modern era The Aima script, developed by Hiralal Debbarma and consciously based on the memory of ancient Koloma, became the best known of the indigenous revivals and gained meaningful attention among cultural activists.
More recently The Kokmari script — another Koloma-inspired system — joined the field, continuing the tradition of indigenous script-making.
Note These modern indigenous scripts largely followed the Brahmic (abugida) tradition — giving each consonant an inherent vowel and using diacritics to change it. They carried the spirit of cultural revival, but inherited the structural assumptions of the Bengali model they hoped to move beyond.

The Roman Script Movement

Running parallel to the indigenous-script efforts was a strong movement demanding the Roman (Latin) script for Kokborok. Student organisations — most prominently the Twipra Students' Federation — have long advocated for it, citing ease of learning, digital compatibility, and wider accessibility. The cause was strengthened by the fact that the language's largest dictionary, published by the Kokborok tei Hukumu Mission, uses the Roman script and has become a widely-used reference.

The result is a long-running, often politically charged, three-way tension: the Bengali script (official legacy), the indigenous abugidas (cultural revival), and the Roman script (practical modernity).

Script Option Advantages Claimed Criticisms
Bengali Script Familiarity, official use, existing literature Foreign structure, imperfect phonemic fit for Kokborok
Indigenous Scripts (Aima, Kokmari, etc.) Cultural identity, visual sovereignty Learning curve, limited adoption, technical challenges
Roman Script Easy to learn, digital-friendly, global reach Seen by some as colonial, lacking an indigenous aesthetic

Where We Stand Today

The debate continues. Kokborok is still written primarily in Bengali in official and educational contexts, while the Roman script gains ground among younger generations and in digital spaces — and the Tripura Board of Secondary Education now permits both Roman and Bengali scripts in examinations. Indigenous scripts like Aima and Kokmari are cherished by cultural activists but have not achieved widespread everyday use.

Enter Yapiri — a new voice in this long conversation. Designed as a true phonemic alphabet from the ground up, it attempts to move beyond the limitations of both the Brahmic tradition and foreign scripts, creating a system that listens first to the actual sounds and rhythms of Kokborok. You can read more about that design choice in why Yapiri is a phonemic alphabet and not an abugida.

 Kokborok — Our Language Eight sounds. Eight characters. One clear voice.

The Heart of the Matter

The script debate is ultimately not about letters alone. It is about who gets to define how a language lives in written form. It is about whether the Tiprasa will continue borrowing systems shaped by other civilisations, or finally create one that grows naturally from their own tongue and soil.

Every attempt — from the ancient Koloma to today's experiments — reflects the enduring desire of the Tiprasa people to see their language written with dignity and belonging.

The conversation is not over. It is evolving. And perhaps, in that evolution, the community will arrive at a script that feels not imposed, not borrowed, but truly its own. If you would like to explore where Yapiri fits into that story, the About page tells the project's story, and the Community page is open to every perspective in this debate.