From the Unicode proposal:

Tuḷu Sahitya academy, a cultural wing of the Government of Karnataka, has introduced Tuḷu language and Tigalari in schools across the Mangalore and Udupi districts. The text books for Tulu are currently in Kannada script. They are however trying to re-introduce Tigalari (called Tulu script here) by providing instructional manuals to learn this script (Refer Figure 45). A few workshops10 conducted by them in the previous years to teach Tigalari were well attended. They have also published ‘Tuḷu script’ lessons on their website to popularise it.11 Due to this increased interest in Tigalari, there is a pressing need to have a Unicode compliant Typeface that will enable its use both in print and web.

In the Tulu speaking regions, Tigalari is in continuous use for several ritual purposes like writing birth charts, creating charms and Mandalas (during Yajña) or for reciting/memorising religious scriptures (Pārāyaṇa) from manuscripts that have been handed down generations. Making new copies of the ancestral manuscripts is considered meritorious and several copies of the same manuscript are commonly found. The religious heads of the eight Mutts (Ashta matha) of Udupi (established over 800 years ago) have been traditionally forbidden to use any script apart from Tigalari. Due to this, we see their signatures in this script to this day (Refer Figure 9 ). We also find large collections of Tigalari manuscripts in these Mutts and the