Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit
Type with Purpose
Good typography guides attention, improves understanding, and makes communication effortless.
The Anatomy of a Typeface
By FontSide · June 2026
Every typeface is a system of decisions — about stroke contrast, x-height, spacing, and rhythm. The best ones feel invisible: you stop seeing the letters and start hearing the voice behind them. That transparency is the hardest thing to design.
A high x-height opens up the counters and makes small text breathe. Tight tracking pulls a headline together; loose tracking gives a caption room to exhale. None of these choices are accidents — they are arguments about how reading should feel.
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Configuration
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Package Manager
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1. Install Package
pnpm add @fontsource/tiro-devanagari-sanskrit2. Import in App
// Please select at least one weight and style3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit", serif;
}Google Fonts CDN
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HTML <head>
<!-- Please select at least one weight and style -->Fontsource CDN
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Global CSS
/* Please select at least one weight and style */Background & Story
Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit has its origins in a typeface designed for the Murty Classical Library of India book series, so is especially suited to traditional literary publishing but also made with the needs of today’s multiple print and screen media in mind. The Tiro Devanagari design applies a contemporary approach to the traditional styling of 19th and 20th Century metal types exemplified in those of the renowned Nirnaya Sagar Press, and is characterised by broader proportions, more generous counters, and strong diagonal strokes and terminals. The Sanskrit font favours traditional forms of conjuncts. For the Open Font License release, Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit has been extended to support additional characters, including signs for Vedic texts, and features a new italic companion. Each font also includes a Latin subset including diacritics for transcription of Indian languages.
Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit was designed by John Hudson and Fiona Ross. The italic was adapted by Paul Hanslow.
To contribute, see github.com/TiroTypeworks/Indigo.
Modern Tiro Indic collection for classical South Asian texts
The beauty and challenges of bridging the old and the new
Two type designers separated by an eight-hour time difference, an ocean, and pandemic travel bans collaborated over video calls and email to make a cohesive set of fonts in 8 South Asian languages. In 2012, Harvard University Press commissioned Fiona Ross and John Hudson, through Tiro Typeworks, to design typefaces for the Murty Classical Library of India book series. The publisher needed to reprint ancient Indian literary, historical, and religious texts, including Vedic and early Sanskrit works. Since these old texts had been printed using traditional letterforms and early Indian typography techniques, the new fonts needed to retain some of the traditional style of the old texts, yet be clear and legible in modern print and digital media.
In 2019 Google Fonts approached Tiro to make an extended and updated version of the Murty Fonts to be released as open source fonts in the Tiro Indic collection, offering users traditional text styles suitable for a variety of uses.
Study the classics and language structure
Before designing the typefaces, it was important to research classical texts and understand the unique characteristics of the languages.
“We looked at very lovely manuscripts or early Indian printed materials from the 18th or 19th Centuries,” said John Hudson.
To learn more, read Modern Tiro Indic collection for classical South Asian texts.
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource/tiro-devanagari-sanskritDesigned by
Tiro Typeworks, John Hudson, Fiona Ross, Paul Hanslow
Links
License
OFL-1.1