TheLaṇḍā scripts, from the termlaṇḍā meaning "without a tail", is aPunjabi word used to refer to writing systems used in Punjab and adjoining areas.[2] InSindhi, it was known as 'Wāṇiko' or 'Baniyañ'.[3]
The Laṇḍā scripts form a "typologically distinct group," and are closer in norms to its predecessorBrāhmī than they are to the Nāgarī scripts to the east, in their general avoidance of conjunct glyphs or marking of theMiddle Indo-Aryan geminations distinctive of Panjābī. While possessing full sets of consonants, even separate letters for the commonLahndā consonant clusterstr anddr, their indication of vowels is less regular; they possess three vowel letters to indicate initial /ə ɪ ʊ/, but no letters or signs in other positions, thus being "alphabetical on the restricted Semitic model ofUgaritic cuneiform."[5]
Landa scripts were originally used asmercantile shorthand for commercial purposes in thePunjab region andSindh; they often lacked the full set of vowel sounds, as well as often imperfect correspondence of consonants. This made them liable to misreadings, frequently recognized by the local population through local proverbs referring to its usefulness only to the original writer. Various technical improvements would make certain descendant scripts fully suitable for literary use, primarily motivated by interest in recording religious scripture, particularly in the cases of Gurmukhī in Punjab, and Khojkī in Sindh.[3]
The Laṇḍā scripts was first classified byGeorge Abraham Grierson.[6] Pandey (2010) further classifies Laṇḍā scripts into "Panjābī" and "Sindhī" regional subclasses:[7]
Sindhī (named after the various regions, communities, or occupations with which they were associated): Aroṛā, Baniyā, Bhatiā, Haidarābādī, Karadī, Khudāwādī, Khwājā (Khojkī), Haṭāī, Haṭavāṇikā, Laraī, Lohāṇākī (Lohāṇā), Maimon, Rajaī, Sakkar, Shikārpurī, Sewhanī Bhabhira, Thatta (Thattai), Vaniyā, Wangaī, Wāṇiko
Grammarians of the 19th century variously identified as many as six Laṇḍā forms used in Punjab and as many as twelve in Sindh.[7] Further typological differences used in this subclassification include:[7]
character repertoire: the Laṇḍā character sets of the Sindhī class possess characters for theimplosive consonants of the language;
character shapes: common letters can be identified by subclass depending on shape;
collation: Panjābī Laṇḍā shares Gurmukhī's sorting order, starting with vowels, then fricativessa andha, then the 5×5 set of occlusives, then sonorants, while Sindhī Laṇḍā follows Devanāgarī more closely; and
orthographic norms: Panjābī Laṇḍā do not use dependent vowel diacritics, the approximate vowel letter is written after the consonant letter, e.g. the syllable /ki/ is written with the letter 'k' followed by the letter 'i'. After standardization, dependent vowel diacritics were introduced into Sindhī Laṇḍā.
Even within these subclasses, the scripts exhibit further differences.
Punjabi postcard dispatched fromJagraon,Ludhiana written in a Laṇḍā script, December 1866
Postcard from Afghanistan written in a Laṇḍā script, ca.1871–72
Page written in a Laṇḍā script
Currently, five Laṇḍā-descended scripts have enough information to be supported in Unicode.
Gurmukhī is used forPanjābī and sometimes forSindhī. Originally used in Sikh scripture and writings, it is the only major Laṇḍā-descended script in modern day usage.[7] It has preserved the distinctive names of letters (kakkā,khakkhā, etc.) and collation order of Laṇḍā (vowels→ fricatives→ occlusives→ sonorants).[5] In keeping with Laṇḍā's proximity to Brāhmī, it has retained a particularly close resemblance to Brāhmī among living scripts.[9] Helping to foster a distinct Sikh culture and contributing to the consolidation of the Sikh religion, as well as first being a vehicle of Sikh religious literature, Gurmukhi became particularly important in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the Sikhs established political hegemony over Punjab and Kashmir.[6]
Khojkī, also known ascaliha akhari or "the forty letters,"[10] anecclesiastical script of theIsma'ili Khoja community, is considered to be a refined version of Lohāṇākī. Originally developed for Sindhi, it had also been used for Punjabi, Saraiki, and Gujarati as it spread, as well as for Arabic and Persian. Shifts in correspondences of letters most commonly included implosive letters for the tenuis consonants, and tenuis letters for aspirated stops. Such shifts was partly because as Khojkī spread to languages without Sindhī's implosives, the corresponding letters lost their original values, leading to shifts and ambiguity in usage.[11] It remained in general use by the community until the early 20th century, as the printing press facilitated its increasing replacement by theGujarati script for Ismāʿīlī literature.[12] By the 1940s, its printing and instruction were confined to its native Sindh, where it survived until the early 1970s,[13] continuing to be taught in community schools[12] until it was superseded by Perso-Arabic.[13]
StandardKhudābādī, formerly used forSindhī, was derived in the 1860s from Khudāwādī, the script associated with merchant communities ofHyderabad, Sindh, theLohāṇā type of which Khojkī was "very close" to,[10] being supplemented with characters from Shikārpurī. It is now obsolete.[14] Through official government initiative and encouragement, it developed into a vehicle for literary expression.[6]
Mahājanī, a script previously used forPanjābī andMārwāṛī, was taught to students from merchant and trading classes for business, and was similar to other accounting scripts like Sarrāfī ("of bankers"), Koṭhīvāl, and Baniauṭī ("of merchants"). Attested mostly from merchant documents, bills of exchange, and letters. It had five vowel letters,a, e, i, o, u, with the letter fori also used forī, e, ai and the letter foru also used forū, o, au. It had neither a dedicated nasalization diacritic, instead using the letter forn, nor script-specific numerals, instead using those of Devanāgarī or Gujarātī, though it does have fraction signs and unit marks, nor script-specific punctuation besides section marks and abbreviation. There are variants of certain letters, and generally did not space between words. It "may not be entirely obsolete."[15]
Multānī, former writing system ofSarāikī, is now obsolete. While classed by Pandey (2012) in the Punjabi subclass, it contains implosive characters and clusters similar to those of the Sindhi subclass, that other Punjabi Landa scripts lack. It had 4 vowel letters,a, i, u, e;a was used forā as well;i was also used forī as well as commonly as a semivowel in place of the lettery;u was used forū ando, ande forai as well aso in some sources. Shifts in sound representation meant that some letters often represented more than one sound, most often with tenuis letters used for aspirated stops, and implosive letters for tenuis sounds, as well as variants of certain letters. Pandey (2012) proposes an "idealized" form for encoding, with more regular correspondences, as well as the usage of Gurmukhī numerals for Multānī, as their numerals are "nearly identical."[16]
Comparison of attested characters of Laṇḍā-descended scripts
Multānī used the character 𑊥 for bothsa andśa, and commonly used the characters 𑊆ga and 𑊝ba for their implosive counterparts as well.[16] Both Multānī and Khojkī commonly used one letter in any given writing for bothja andjha, which are "anyway rather weakly contrasted phonemes,"[12]: 36 at least in the case of Khojkī. While both scripts each have two characters used interchangeably for both phonemes, they were conflated to the extent that the lesser-used letters of each, while attested, are not currently supported in Unicode. According to Pandey, "it is possible that a distinct letter forjha exists in a style of Multani. For this reason, space has been reserved for *jha in the [Unicode] block."[16] In both cases, the unsupported letter shares a resemblance with Gurmukhī ਜja.
While Laṇḍā did not have dependent vowel signs, several descendent scripts like Gurmukhī, Khojkī and Khudābādī have developed them. Earlier Khojkī represented diphthongs in a manner more similar to Laṇḍā.[12]: 37 Khojkī 𑈂 was typically used for bothi andī.[11]
These scripts developed further adaptations as necessity arose. Gurmukhī has developed supplementary and subscript letters to accommodate loansounds and certain consonant clusters respectively. Mahājanī had the ligature 𑅶śrī and various accounting signs. Multānī had the character 𑊨ṛha, and Khudābādī had the character 𑋓𑋩fa. Khojkī had the characters 𑈫ḷa and 𑈿qa, as well as conjuncts forkṣa,jña,tra, anddra, often borrowing such orthography from easterly scripts.[12]: 37 It also made extensive use of itsnuqtā to accommodate the emphatics, uvulars, and pharyngeals of Arabic. Letters of the unstandardized scripts often had glyphic variants; for instance, a variant of Multānī 𑊗tha resembles its Gurmukhī counterpart ਥ.
Punjabi-language manuscript of the 'Ekadashi Mahatam' written in a Punjabi variant of Sharada script, ca.1200–1300
Other Laṇḍā-linked scripts have been documented. The ones below do not have enough information to be supported in Unicode.
Bhaṭṭākharī, also speltbhaṭ(ṭ) ākhrī orbhaṭākshrī, was used to write theBhat Vahi literature and was employed by historicalBhatt writers.[17][18] It was a "family code such as Laṇḍā and Mahājanī,"[18][19] and like Laṇḍā lacked vowel signs.[20]
Laṅgaṛī, historically used by bookkeepers in theHaryana region, possibly a subtype of Mahājanī.[21]
Mundī, merchant script used byMarwari andGujarati businessmen and bookkeepers for recording accounts and correspondences.[22] Its name derives from the Hindi termmundā denoting bare-headedness, referring to its lack ofśirorekhā, or top line characteristic of many abugidas of the area.[23]
Scripts classified as Laṇḍā in the nineteenth century have been attested further east, including Mudia inAwadh,Garhwal, and towns in theNorth-Western Provinces, andBisati Laṇḍā by Muslim traders in the North-Western Provinces.[8]
^India Census Commissioner (1902)."Census of India, 1901".Census of India.17 (1). Government Central Press:266–267.Landa, literally the docked or tailless script.... is taught bypadhas, in a sort of nursery rhyme, of which the following is the Rohtak version.
^abShackle, Christopher (2007). "Writing Systems of the Indo-Aryan Languages". In Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (eds.).The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 594–595.ISBN978-1-135-79711-9.
^abcAsani, Ali A. (1987). "The Khojkī Script: A Legacy of Ismaili Islam in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent".Journal of the American Oriental Society.107 (3):440–441.JSTOR603464.
^Masica, Colin (1993).The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. p. 145.ISBN978-0-521-29944-2.(It may be noted in passing, and should be apparent from the samples in Table 6.1, that the Nagari script is one that has gone furthest from Brahmi, at least among the "Northern" scripts. The other scripts, particularly Gurmukhi, often retain letters more similar to those of Brahmi.)
^Punjab History Conference: Proceedings. Vol. 22. Department of Punjab Historical Studies, Punjabi University. 1989. p. 86.
^abMcLeod, W. H. (July 16, 2009).The A to Z of Sikhism. Scarecrow Press. p. 37.ISBN9780810863446.These they wrote in a script called Bhatakshri, which was a family code such as Lande and Mahajani.
^Singh, Karnail (2005). "24: Bhatt Wahis".Fragments of Half a Century. Institute of Sikh Studies. p. 96.ISBN9788185815251.
^Kaushik, Kshama V.; Dutta, Kaushik (Jan 23, 2012). "Bahi-Khata and Parta System".India Means Business: How the elephant earned its stripes. Oxford University Press.ISBN9780199088515.The language used for writing depends on the business; since most of the Indian business was in the hands of Marwaris and Gujaratis in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,mundi was the language of choice for bookkeeping. The other accounting language was found among Punjabi businessmen which was calledlangdi Hindi.
^Garg, Vipin K. (1984).Trade Practices and Traditions: Origin and Development in India. Allied. pp. v,107–109.ISBN9780836414349.For many centuries past, the merchant class in India had been using a special script for recording accounts and for correspondence. This script acquired different names in different areas like Mundi, Mudiya, Modi, Mahajani, and Sarrafi.... The name Munda also signifies its relationship with the Hindi dialect of the area. In Hindi, the word 'Munda' is used to denote bare-headedness. Since the alphabet for writing Mundi did not have the bar on top of the alphabet...
