Nithya Ranjana
A typeface based on the calligraphic Ranjana script — carrying 8–11th century manuscript heritage into the browser, with 750+ conjuncts, 500+ matra forms and four stylistic sets.
Ranjana originated sometime between the 8–11th centuries and is used to write Sanskrit and Nepal Bhasa. It was mainly used for writing Buddhist and Hindu texts in South Asia and is also used for cultural contexts by the Newar people of the Kathmandu valley in Nepal.
It has a rich legacy in manuscript calligraphy, stone inscriptions, wood engravings and paintings, but it has had limited digital representation due to its complexity and lack of Unicode support.
The challenge in creating Nithya Ranjana was to strike a balance between Ranjana's heritage and contemporary requirements: correct rendering for historical texts, and elegant, predictable behaviour for everyday use on screens.
The Ranjana script does not have Unicode support to date, so Nithya Ranjana ships in two editions until a Ranjana Unicode proposal is accepted.
For text typed in Devanagari Unicode. Use the font-nithya-ranjana class — the default on this page and in the demo.
Change the text, size, spacing and stylistic sets right here — then open the full studio in the demo.
Two steps to Nithya Ranjana on any webpage. The demo page runs on exactly this code.
Add the @font-face declarations to your stylesheet. WOFF2 first, OTF as fallback.
@font-face {
font-family: 'NithyaRanjana';
src: url('https://cdn.staticdelivr.com/gh/callijatra/nithya-ranjana-webfont1/main/fonts/NithyaRanjanaDU-Regular.woff2') format('woff2'),
url('https://cdn.staticdelivr.com/gh/callijatra/nithya-ranjana-webfont1/main/fonts/NithyaRanjanaDU-Regular.woff') format('woff'),
url('https://cdn.staticdelivr.com/gh/callijatra/nithya-ranjana-webfont1/main/fonts/NithyaRanjanaDU-Regular.otf') format('opentype');
font-weight: normal;
font-display: swap;
}
.font-nithya-ranjana {
font-family: 'NithyaRanjana', sans-serif;
}The DU version expects Devanagari Unicode source text. For Newa Unicode, use font-nithya-ranjana-nu.
<h1 class="font-nithya-ranjana">ॐ वागिश्वरि मूं</h1>
<h1 class="font-nithya-ranjana-ss01">ॐ वागिश्वरि मूं</h1>
/* Stylistic sets: ss01 – ss04 */
.font-nithya-ranjana-ss01 {
font-feature-settings: "ss01" 1;
}Grab TTF files from the releases page, use the webfonts in fonts/ directly, or explore the interactive specimen — everything is free under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
Designed, engineered and maintained by Ek Type, India, with support from Callijatra, Nepal.