FOR VIEWING THIS DOCUMENT PROPERLY STAY ONLINE ASSAMESE AND THE UNICODE INTRODUCTION This piece of writing seeks to clear up the whole issue of the position of the Assamese people, their language and its system of writing in the world, more particularly in the Unicode Standard, keeping in mind all the parties involved in the issue including the Unicode Consortium. All the facts, historical, socialPHUKAN'S, political and technical which are necessary and essential to be discussed are being discussed openly, even if it may seem unpleasant to some and unnecessary or irrelevant and boring to some other, nothing in the dark, nothing to hide. The Unicode Consortium, a non-Governmental body with headquarters in the U.S.A, with Governments of countries as members have standardised a Universal Character Set (UCS), i.e. a standard that defines, in one place, all the characters needed for writing the majority of living languages in use on computers. It aims to be, and to a large extent already is, a superset of all other character sets that have been encoded. Unicode (as the UCS is commonly referred to) can access over a million characters of which about 100,000WEBPAGES have already been defined. These include characters for all the world's main languages along with a selection of symbols for various purposes. Assamese SATYAKAMis one of the language recognized and listed in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution of India. In the list the language is on the top. In all currency notes the denomination of the currency valued is written first in Assamese, the name being DRalphabetically on the top of the sorting order. But the same has not happened in case 1 of the Assamese script . Assamese script is not recognized as a separate writing system but Assamese language is considered to be written using the Bengali script. This is what is happening in the ISCII or the Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange. The same thing has been reflected in the Unicode’s Universal Character Set, the UCS. Since most of the Assamese and Bengali alphabets are similar in their canonical forms, it is possible to write in Assamese language using Unicode Bengali encodings and ISCII (Indian Standard Code) encodings using the Bengali script, where the two Assamese alphabets dissimilar in form with the current set of alphabets used in writing Bengali viz. ৰ (ra) and ৱ (wa) are included andPHUKAN'S another alphabet “khya ক” not included. The included two are being shown there as Bengali alphabets. But it is possible simply to write Assamese using the Bengali script but not possible to do two other important functions in the Assamese language using these encodings. First, sorting software/programs cannot sort in Assamese language because the alphabetical order of the characters/alphabets as is normally present in the normal list of Assamese alphabets is disrupted and positions misplaced in the Unicode chart of the Bengali language. This is something called in computer parlance as collation error. Second, no transliteration to and fromWEBPAGES the Assamese language is possible because of the non-representation of the Assamese script in Unicode. Although the script is similar in form by many of its characters to Bengali, they represent different entities and makingSATYAKAM them functionally totally different from the form used by the Bengali, in case of many of the alphabets. This is something which is called in Unicode terminology, duplication of character. Unicode has encountered duplication of characters between three major European writing systems namely, Latin, Cyrillic DR 2 and Greek and has allowed duplicate and triplicate characters for these scripts. What is there in case of the Assamese scripts is also the presence duplicity with the Bengali script. This duplicity is there in the Assamese script because it was designed since the ancient times to write two languages Assamese and Sanskrit which are of quite differing phonology, using the same set of alphabets which change their identity and functionality as per the language of the scripts. Historically this script now named Bengali in the ISCII and the Unicode, does not belong to the Bengali language and this erroneous nomenclature of the script as Bengali has generated considerable displeasure in the Assamese community. The historical issue of this erroneous nomenclature ofPHUKAN'S this writing system as Bengali has already been conveyed to the Unicode by the memoranda of mine and Pastor Azizul Haque. The matter is referred to the Government of India by the Unicode supposedly seeing political implications and is still pending with them. The Government of India has also responded, I have received written communication from the Department of Information Technology. The Government of India is seeking opinion of the respective state Governments of the states of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Manipur. The contents following this will try to describe and discuss in details the problem and possible solution of the seemingly vexed issue. WHAT IS ASSAM AND KAMRUPWEBPAGES ? Presently, Assam is a state of, the sovereign nation called the Union of India. It is in the northSATYAKAM eastern part of India. It is geographically connected to the Indian mainland by a narrow strip of land in the Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal. Assam is surrounded on all the side barring the western border by the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura and Mizoram. DR 3 Historically the heritage of Assam and the Assamese people goes back to the times when Assam was known as Kamrup. Historically India had been more of a continent or a subcontinent with many countries within its realm. The area of Assam was part of one such country known as Kamrup. The name Assam came into use from an important group of people who came to rule a major portion of the land of Kamrup since 13 t h century AD for a period of around 600 years. These Ahoms by origin are a group of non-Buddhist Tai people, who had their roots in the area of the Yunnan province of China, when there was an independent and powerful Tai Kingdom called Nan-Chao, later overrun by a Mongol-Chinese invasion. The name Tai itself means "free" or a "free-men". Asham was the name by which the Tai peoplePHUKAN'S are known to non-Tai peoples of Burma or Myanmar and that name became associated with the Kingdom founded in Kamrup by the great Ahom King Su-Ka-Pha. WEBPAGES SATYAKAM The history of Kamrup however is very very ancient, going back some thousands of years in time. The Kingdom of Kamrup had definite boundaries, marked by the DR 4 rivers. The name element "Kam" is significant, it found associated with places along the Himalayan range from west to east. In the east there is the eastern most Tibetan province of Kam or Kham, then in Tibet proper just above the western part of Bhutan is one place called Kamru, the map shown above. Further westward in the Kinnaur region of the Himachal Pradesh bordering Tibet is another place name Kamru. PHUKAN'S WEBPAGES SATYAKAM In Kamru there is fort, inside which there is temple dedicated to Goddess DRKamakhya. In Assam there are several temples in the name of Goddess 5 Kamakhya. The largest and the most famous of them is located in the Nilachal hill within the capital city of Guwahati. Interestingly Kamru is the name by which Kamrup has been known to the Persians since very very ancient times, record of which can be found in many of the ancient Persian manuscripts. PHUKAN'S In the Nuristan province of Afghanistan is the town of Kamdesh or Kambrom. In Persian language Kamrup is called Kamru. The country of Wales in United Kingdom is called in the Welsh language as Cymru or Cymri and their language, Cymraeg. WEBPAGES SATYAKAM As per Hindu mythology the name Kamrup has come from the re-emergence of the Hindu God of Love Kamdev, regaining his form in this particular land. As per the mythology he had been reduced to ashes by fiery beams emanating from the Third DR 6 Eye of another Hindu God Shiva, the destroyer. “Kam” the God, regaining his form or “rup”. This explanation about the origin of the name Kamrup cannot be anything more than a clever invention of some ancient Hindu intellectuals or priests. Instances of this sort of synthetic Hindu mythological linkages abound at all places where people were newly “baptized” into the Hindu fold in the ancient times. Hard to believe but this type of distortions of historical facts continues even up to the present times. The name “Kamrup” has got relation with all the places with the name element “Kam” mentioned above. The originators of the what is now the Assamese people and language had come to the area of present day Assam, not by the way of Gangetic plains of northern India but by the way of northernPHUKAN'S side of the Himalayan range of mountain in southern part of Tibet. Not only the Assamese, progenitors of many nationalities in north-eastern part of India and south-east Asia had migrated along this important migratory route of the ancient times and it is also part of many of the well established caravan trails to and from Tibet. This important part of the of the ethno-linguistic history of Assam and the Assamese people have been ignored and not investigated by the dominant segment or more properly the lobby of the Assamese intellectuals except one, Devananda Bharali the pioneer linguist of the Assamese language. WEBPAGES HISTORICAL OVERVIEW The Kingdom of Kamrup existed as an independent country continuously through several centuriesSATYAKAM of history from the times shrouded in mythology.