Leke

The Leke are a messianic Buddhist sect established in 1860, who live in villages in Myanmar in the Megatha Forest complex, on either side of the border around Three Pagodas Pass, and in the Gwe Ka Baw (Zwe Kabin) area, near Pa’an. Their language, Eastern Pwo Karen, is spoken by 1,050,000 people in Myanmar and Thailand. It is normally written in the Myanmar or Thai scripts, but the Leke use their own script.

The Leke script is generally believed to be the earliest Karen script, and a derivation from the Mon-Burmese, although the shapes of the letters have changed significantly over time and are now more angular in form. The Leke people themselves refer to their writing as li chaw wae, literally, chicken-scratch letters. They have written a holy book in this script.

This script is not currently recognized by  ISO 15924, but is included in ScriptSource for research purposes. If you have any information on this script, please add the information to the site. Your contributions can be a great help in refining and expanding the ISO 15924 standard.