Maha Sila Viravong (, ) was a Lao

scholar A scholar is a person who is a researcher or has expertise in an academic discipline. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher at a university. An academic usually holds an advanced degree or a termina ...

of traditional

Lao literature The people of Laos have a rich literary tradition dating back at least six hundred years, with the oral and storytelling traditions of its peoples dating back much earlier. Lao literature refers to the written productions of Laotian peoples, its � ...

, history, and culture. In the 1930s, backed by the Buddhist Institute in Vientiane and the Buddhist Academic Council, he added an additional set of characters to the

Lao script Lao script or Akson Lao ( ) is the primary script used to write the Lao language and other languages in Laos. Its earlier form, the Tai Noi script, was also used to write the Isan language, but was replaced by the Thai script. It has 27 co ...

, in order to support Pali and Sanskrit, thereby filling the missing gaps in the existing script. While the Buddhist Institute published books that utilised these extended Indic characters, they did not see widespread usage, and fell out of usage by 1975. In 2019, the extended Indic characters were added to

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

12. He designed the current

Flag of Laos The national flag of the Laos, Lao People's Democratic Republic consists of 3 horizontal stripes, with the middle stripe in blue being twice the height of the top and bottom red stripes. In the middle is a white disc, the diameter of the disc is ...

in 1945.

Personal life

Three of his children,

Douangdeuane Bounyavong Douangdeuane Bounyavong (; ''Dūangdư̄an Bunyāvong''; born 11 June 1947, also known by her maiden name Douangdeuane Viravong), pen name Dok Ked ''(Dō̜kkēt)'', is a Laotian writer. Her best known story is ''Kam Pha Phi Noi'' ('The Little O ...

Dara Viravong Dara Viravong Kanlagna or Dara Viravong; Douangchampa (born 1940) is a Lao writer. She was involved with work that led to the creation of the Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts. Life Kanlagna was born in Laos in 1940. Her father, Sila Viravong ...

and Pakian Viravong are prominent Laotian writers.

References

{{Authority control People from Roi Et province 1905 births 1987 deaths Laotian writers Culture of Laos Laotian people of Thai descent