Abstract/Summary

Fiona Ross and John Hudson (co-designers) were commissioned by Harvard University Press to design an original typeface in the Devanagari script for Sanskrit language composition for the prestigious Murty Classical Library of India series. In line with other specially commissioned Indian-script typeface designs for this project, the brief was to provide high-quality readable type that would render the classics accessible to a wide readership world-wide, i.e. to young readers as well as scholars of Indian literature. Murty Sanskrit typeface was first used for the publication of the classical text of the Bharavi, Arjuna and the Hunter (HUP, 2016). This was a natural development of the Murty Hindi typeface. Again, informed by Ross’s research and her Sanskrit studies, the proportions and styling of the characters are in keeping with the typographic tradition established by the renowned Nirnaya Sagar Press, yet with a deliberate reduction of the typically high degree of stroke modulation. Particular typeforms, and a considerable number of additional conjuncts (ligated consonantal clusters) required for the more complex Sanskrit composition have been introduced to the font. The result is a robust, modern typeface that renders the generally lengthy words of Sanskrit text in a clean and uncluttered style for optimal readability. Murty Sanskrit is now available, free of charge, for non-commercial use from the Murty Classical Library of India website.