Karani or Chhata was a handwritten cursive writing system historically used to write the Odia language[2][3][4] primarily for court, land, temple and accounting records, and other administrative purposes.

[7] The writers historically belonged to the Karan caste group who were designated to use Karani.

[5] The script was used in the Odia-speaking regions during British Raj including the Orissa Tributary States.

Karani is often explained as "karaninabaja" or "chhata", a "running" script with mistakes introduced by the Karanas, making it less standard.

The script also did not use spaces between words and lacked punctuations, both allowing the writers to write fast, but making it hard to decipher later.