Recently I found that Tamil Brahmi which is the precursor to the modern Tamil Language was included in the Unicode Standard. It is encoded in the range 11000-1107F. So I thought if its encoded in Unicode I wondered if I could typeset in Latex.This is my experiment. First we need the fonts for Brahmi and fortunately there is a font called Adinatha Tamil Brahmi and also its font manual. and another font from Google Noto-Fonts called Noto Sans Brahmi.
I Checked if I could type freely using IBus but unfortunately you can only enter characters one at a time this would be very time consuming, Luckily for us there is a transliteration tool from the authors of the font called Aksharamukha. To transliterate, set the base as Tamil and the output as Tamil Brahmi and you are good to go. Don't set the base as Tamil extended it doesn't work. Remember Aksharamukha is not a Translation tool. Type your work and transliterate and copy the Tamil Brahmi letters.
Download and install the font. Run the following commands
sudo fc-cache -v
sudo mkfontscale
sudo mkdir
IF you are using LuaLaTex run the following command to load the font
luaotfload-tool --find "Adinatha Tamil Brahmi"
This will load the font. Now you can typeset in either XeLaTex or LuaLaTex. Since both Polyglossia and Babel don't support the Tamil Brahmi language natively we are turning to the fontspec package. Here is the minimal working example.
\RequirePackage[orthodox]{nag}
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{fontenc}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{ClearSans}
\newfontfamily{\TACtam}{Lohit Tamil}
\newfontfamily{\bram}{Adinatha Tamil Brahmi}
\begin{document}
Hello.{\TACtam{வணக்கம்}}.{\bram{𑀯𑀡𑀓𑁆𑀓𑀫𑁆}}.
\end{document}
Here is the screenshot.
Well my document compiled perfectly. Once again kudos to Vindodh Rajan, Shriramana Sharma and Udhaya Sankar for the Font and Vindoh Rajan For maintaining the Aksharamuka transliteration tool.
