The Kirat Rai script is used to write the Bantawa language in the Sikkim state of India. Kanchenjunga is the first Unicode font family for this script of South Asia and The Kirat Rai script was officially encoded in the Unicode Standard version 16.0. The font is named after the third highest mountain in the world, located on the border between Sikkim state in northeast India and eastern Nepal. This peak represents the geographical distribution of the Bantawa language.

The design of the font is loosely based on the handwriting style of Kirat Rai which was used in some of the early reading primers for Kirat Rai. Kirat Rai script is also called “Khambu Rai Lipi” in West Bengal.

This font was developed by SIL, and you can learn more about it at software.sil.org/kanchenjunga. To contribute, see github.com/silnrsi/font-kanchenjunga.