Thursday, 26 June 2014 00:00
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The Unicode Consortium has just announced the release of version 7.0 of the Unicode Standard. Unicode 7.0 includes Sinhala numerals.
“The Unicode Standard supports the interchange, processing, and display of the written texts of the diverse languages of the world and in addition supports classical and historical texts of many written language,” the website www.unicode.org stated.
The ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) initiated research in partnership with the University of Colombo, School of Computing. Extensive research was carried out on inscriptions on walls of temples, on numbers in horoscopes, on Ola leaf paging and the historical evolution of Sinhala numerals was studied. Sinhala numerals were also correlated with numerations used in other countries. The research yielded the fact that five different types of numerations were used in Sinhala. Of these numerations, two sets were in use in the 20th century. These are: (1) ‘Lith Ilakkam’ which include a zero and had been used in astrological calculations and in numbering pages of Ola leaf books, and (2) ‘Sinhala Ilakkam’ or Sinhala archaic numerals used to express simple numbers. The latter had been used in the Kandyan convention signed in 1815.
Lith Ilakkam, which includes the zero concept are included in the main Sinhala code page of Unicode 7.0, and Sinhala Ilakkam are included in the supplementary area.
A Synopsis of the research was presented at the National Archaeological Symposium held in July 2009, conducted by the Department of Archaeology, and the presentation was well received by the participants.
The Sinhala ICT standard Sri Lanka Standard Sinhala Character Code for Information Interchange, SLS 1134 : 2011, approved by the Sri Lanka Standards Institution includes Sinhala numerals.
