Gurmukhi

Gurmukhī ( , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). Commonly regarded as a Sikh script, Gurmukhi is used in Punjab, India as the official script of the Punjabi language. In the past, the script was also employed to write scientific and poetic literature from both Sanskritic and Persian traditions in the Braj language.

The primary scripture of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, is written in Gurmukhī, in various dialects and languages often subsumed under the generic title '' Sant Bhasha'' or "saint language", in addition to other languages like Persian and various phases of Indo-Aryan languages.

Modern Gurmukhī has thirty-five original letters, hence its common alternative term ''paintī'' or "the thirty-five", plus six additional consonants, nine vowel diacritics, two diacritics for nasal sounds, one diacritic that geminates consonants and three subscript characters.

The script is revered by Sikhs for its use in writing Sikh scriptures. It has been described as being "tailor-made" to writing the Punjabi language as it existed in the 16th century.

History and development

Popular theory of origin

Whilst the creation of the Gurmukhi script is commonly attributed to the second guru of the Sikhs, Guru Angad, according to Mangat Bhardwaj the Gurmukhi script or its antecedents pre-date the development of Sikhism by several centuries. Sikh scholars themselves, such as Kahn Singh of Nabha (1930), G. B. Singh (1950), Piara Singh Padam (1954), and G. S. Sidhu (2004), have documented Gurmukhi prior to the arising of Sikhism. The glyphs and symbols employed in Gurmukhi pre-date Sikhism and it is more likely that Guru Angad standardized the pre-existing scripts around 1530–1535 to create the standard Gurmukhi script under the purview of Guru Nanak.

Development

The Gurmukhī script is generally believed to have roots in the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet by way of the Brahmi script, which developed further into the Northwestern group ( Sharada, or Śāradā, and its descendants, including Landa and Takri), the Central group ( Nagari and its descendants, including Devanagari, Gujarati and Modi) and the Eastern group (evolved from Siddhaṃ, including Bangla, Tibetan, and some Nepali scripts), as well as several prominent writing systems of Southeast Asia and Sinhala in Sri Lanka, in addition to scripts used historically in Central Asia for extinct languages like Saka and Tocharian. Gurmukhi is derived from Sharada in the Northwestern group, of which it is the only major surviving member, with full modern currency.
Notable features include:
* It is an abugida in which all consonants have an inherent vowel, . Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant they are applied to, are used to change the inherent vowel.
* When they appear at the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.
* To form consonant clusters, Gurmukhi uniquely affixes subscript letters at the bottom of standard characters, rather than using the true conjunct symbols used by other scripts, which merge parts of each letter into a distinct character of its own.
* Punjabi is a tonal language with three tones. These are indicated in writing using the formerly voiced aspirated consonants (''gh'', ''dh'', ''bh'', etc.) and the intervocalic ''h''.

Gurmukhi evolved in cultural and historical circumstances notably different from other regional scripts, for the purpose of recording scriptures of Sikhism, a far less Sanskritized cultural tradition than others of the subcontinent. This independence from the Sanskritic model allowed it the freedom to evolve unique orthographical features. These include:
*Three basic bearer vowels, integrated into the traditional Gurmukhi character set, using the vowel diacritics to write independent vowels, instead of distinctly separate characters for each of these vowels as in other scripts;
*a drastic reduction in the number and importance of conjunct characters (similar to Brahmi, the letters of which Gurmukhi letters have remained more similar to than those of Nagari have, and characteristic of Northwestern abugidas);
*a unique standard ordering of characters that somewhat diverges from the traditional ''vargiya'', or Sanskritic, ordering of characters, including vowels and fricatives being placed in front;
*the recognition of Indo-Aryan phonological history through the omission of characters representing the sibilants and , retaining only the letters representing sounds of the spoken language of the time; these sibilants were naturally lost in most modern Indo-Aryan languages, though such characters were often retained in their respective consonant inventories as placeholders and archaisms while being mispronounced. These sibilants were often variously reintroduced through later circumstances, as was to Gurmukhi, necessitating a new glyph;
*the development of distinct new letters for sounds better reflecting the vernacular language spoken during the time of its development (e.g. for , and the sound shift that merged Sanskrit and /kʰ/ to Punjabi /kʰ/);
*a gemination diacritic, a unique feature among native subcontinental scripts, which serve to indicate the preserved Middle Indo-Aryan geminates distinctive of Punjabi;
and other features.

From the 10th century onwards, regional differences started to appear between the Sharada script used in Punjab, the Hill States (partly Himachal Pradesh) and Kashmir. Sharada proper was eventually restricted to very limited ceremonial use in Kashmir, as it grew increasingly unsuitable for writing the Kashmiri language. With the last known inscription dating to 1204 C.E., the early 13th century marks a milestone in the development of Sharada. The regional variety in Punjab continued to evolve from this stage through the 14th century; during this period it starts to appear in forms closely resembling Gurmukhī and other Landa scripts. By the 15th century, Sharada had evolved so considerably that epigraphists denote the script at this point by a special name, ''Dēvāśēṣa''. Tarlochan Singh Bedi (1999) prefers the name ''prithamă gurmukhī'', or Proto-Gurmukhī. It was through its recording in Gurmukhi that knowledge of the pronunciation and grammar of the Old Punjabi language (c. 10th–16th century) was preserved for modern philologists.

The Sikh gurus adopted Proto-Gurmukhī to write the Guru Granth Sahib, the religious scriptures of the Sikhs. The Takri alphabet developed through the ''Dēvāśēṣa'' stage of the Sharada script from the 14th-18th centuries and is found mainly in the Hill States such as Chamba, Himachal Pradesh and surrounding areas, where it is called Chambeali. In Jammu Division, it developed into Dogri, which was a "highly imperfect" script later consciously influenced in part by Gurmukhi during the late 19th century, possibly to provide it an air of authority by having it resemble scripts already established in official and literary capacities, though not displacing Takri. The local Takri variants got the status of official scripts in some of the Punjab Hill States, and were used for both administrative and literary purposes until the 19th century. After 1948, when Himachal Pradesh was established as an administrative unit, the local Takri variants were replaced by Devanagari.

Meanwhile, the mercantile scripts of Punjab known as the Laṇḍā scripts were normally not used for literary purposes. ''Laṇḍā'' means alphabet "without tail", implying that the script did not have vowel symbols. In Punjab, there were at least ten different scripts classified as Laṇḍā, Mahajani being the most popular. The Laṇḍā scripts were used for household and trade purposes. In contrast to Laṇḍā, the use of vowel diacritics was made obligatory in Gurmukhī for increased accuracy and precision, due to the difficulties involved in deciphering words without vowel signs.

In the following epochs, Gurmukhī became the primary script for the literary writings of the Sikhs. Playing a significant role in Sikh faith and tradition, it expanded from its original use for Sikh scriptures and developed its own orthographical rules, spreading widely under the Sikh Empire and used by Sikh kings and chiefs of Punjab for administrative purposes. Also playing a major role in consolidating and standardizing the Punjabi language, it served as the main medium of literacy in Punjab and adjoining areas for centuries when the earliest schools were attached to '' gurdwaras''. The first natively produced grammars of the Punjabi language were written in the 1860s in Gurmukhi. The Singh Sabha Movement of the late 19th century, a movement to revitalize Sikh institutions which had declined during colonial rule after the fall of the Sikh Empire, also advocated for the usage of the Gurmukhi script for mass media, with print media publications and Punjabi-language newspapers established in the 1880s. In the 1940s leading up to the 1947 partition, the Akali Dal held talks with the Muslim League where official recognition of Gurmukhi was demanded in-order to win the Sikhs over to the Pakistani cause. Later in the 20th century, after the struggle of the Punjabi Suba movement, from the founding of modern India in the 1940s to the 1960s, the script was given the authority as the official state script of the Punjab, India, where it is used in all spheres of culture, arts, education, and administration, with a firmly established common and secular character. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic, and is currently the 14th most used script in the world.

Etymology

The prevalent view among Punjabi linguists is that as in the early stages the Gurmukhī letters were primarily used by the Guru's followers, '' gurmukhs'' (literally, those who face, or follow, the Guru, as opposed to a '' manmukh''); the script thus came to be known as ''gurmukhī'', "the script of those guided by the Guru." Guru Angad is credited in the Sikh tradition with the creation and standardization of Gurmukhi script from earlier Śāradā-descended scripts native to the region. It is now the standard writing script for the Punjabi language in India. The original Sikh scriptures and most of the historic Sikh literature have been written in the Gurmukhi script.

Although the word Gurmukhī has been commonly translated as "from the Mouth of the Guru", the term used for the Punjabi script has somewhat different connotations. This usage of the term may have gained currency from the use of the script to record the utterances of the Sikh Gurus as scripture, which were often referred to as Gurmukhī, or from the ''mukhă'' (face, or mouth) of the Gurus. Consequently, the script that was used to write the resulting scripture may have also been designated with the same name.

The name for the Perso–Arabic alphabet for the Punjabi language, ''Shahmukhi'', was modeled on the term ''Gurmukhi''.

Characters

Letters

The Gurmukhī alphabet contains thirty-five base letters (''akkhară''), traditionally arranged in seven rows of five letters each. The first three letters, or ''mātarā vāhakă'' ("vowel bearer"), are distinct because they form the basis for independent vowels and are not consonants, or ''vianjană'', like the remaining letters are, and except for the second letter ''aiṛā'' are never used on their own; see for further details. The pair of fricatives, or ''mūlă vargă'' ("base class"), share the row, which is followed by the next five sets of consonants, with the consonants in each row being homorganic, the rows arranged from the back (velars) to the front (labials) of the mouth, and the letters in the grid arranged by place and manner of articulation. The arrangement, or ''varṇămāllā'', is completed with the ''antimă ṭollī'', literally "ending group." The names of most of the consonants are based on their reduplicative phonetic values, and the ''varṇămāllā'' is as follows:

The nasal letters ਙ ''ṅaṅṅā'' and ਞ ''ñaññā'' have become marginal as independent consonants in modern Gurmukhi. The sounds they represent occur most often as allophones of [] in clusters with velars and palatals respectively.

The pronunciation of ਵ can vary allophonically between preceding front vowels, and elsewhere.

The most characteristic feature of the Punjabi language is its tone system. The script has no separate symbol for tones, but they correspond to the tonal consonants that once represented voiced aspirates as well as older *''h''. To differentiate between consonants, the Punjabi tonal consonants of the fourth column, ਘ ''kà'', ਝ ''cà'', ਢ ''ṭà'', ਧ ''tà'', and ਭ ''pà'', are often transliterated in the way of the voiced aspirate consonants ''gha'', ''jha'', ''ḍha'', ''dha'', and ''bha'' respectively, although Punjabi lacks these sounds. Tones in Punjabi can be either rising, neutral, or falling:
*When the tonal letter is in onset positions, as in the pronunciation of the names of the Gurmukhī letters, it produces the falling tone on the syllable nucleus, indicated by a grave accent (◌̀).
*When the tonal letter is in syllabic coda positions, the tone on the syllable nucleus is rising, indicated by an acute accent (◌́).
*When the tonal letter is in intervocalic positions, after a short vowel and before a long vowel, the following vowel has a falling tone. Between two short vowels, the tonal letter produces a rising tone on the preceding vowel.
The letters now always represent unaspirated consonants, and are unvoiced in onset positions and voiced elsewhere.

Supplementary letters

In addition to the 35 original letters, there are six supplementary consonants in official usage, referred to as the ''navīnă ṭollī'' or ''navīnă vargă'', meaning "new group", created by placing a dot (''bindī'') at the foot (''pairă'') of the consonant to create ''pairĭ bindī'' consonants. These are not present in the Guru Granth Sahib or old texts. These are used most often for loanwords, though not exclusively, and their usage is not always obligatory:

The letter ਸ਼, already in use by the time of the earliest Punjabi grammars produced, along with ਜ਼ and ਲ਼, enabled the previously unmarked distinction of /s/ and the well-established phoneme /ʃ/, which is used even in native echo doublets e.g. ''rō̆ṭṭī-śō̆ṭṭī'' "stuff to eat"; the loansounds ''f'', ''z'', ''x'', and ''ġ'' as distinct phonemes are less well-established, decreasing in that order and often dependent on exposure to Hindi-Urdu norms.

The character ਲ਼ (''ḷa''), the only character not representing a fricative consonant, was only recently officially added to the Gurmukhī alphabet. It was not a part of the traditional orthography, as the distinctive phonological difference between /lə/ and /ɭə/, while both native sounds, was not reflected in the script, and its inclusion is still not currently universal. Previous usage of another glyph to represent this sound, ��੍ਰ has also been attested. The letters ਲ਼ ''ḷa'', like ਙ ''ṅ'', ਞ ''ñ,'' ਣ ''ṇ'', and ੜ ''ṛ'', do not occur word-initially, except in some cases their names.

Other characters, like the more recent ��਼//, are also on rare occasion used unofficially, chiefly for transliterating old writings in Persian and Urdu, the knowledge of which is less relevant in modern times.

Subscript letters

Three "subscript" letters, called ''duttă akkhară'' ("joint letters") or ''pairī̃ akkhară'' ("letters at the feet") are utilised in modern Gurmukhī: forms of ਹ ''ha'', ਰ ''ra'', and ਵ ''va''.

The subscript ਰ ''ra'' and ਵ ''va'' are used to make consonant clusters and behave similarly; subjoined ਹ ''ha'' introduces tone.

In addition to the three standard subscript letters, another subscript character representing the subjoined /j/, the ''yakaśă'' or ''pairī̃ yayyā'' ( ੵ U+0A75), is utilized specifically in archaized ''sahaskritī''-style writings in Sikh scripture, where it is found 268 times for word forms and inflections from older phases of Indo-Aryan, as in the examples ਰਖੵਾ /ɾəkʰːjaː/ "(to be) protected", ਮਿਥੵੰਤ /mɪt̪ʰjən̪t̪ə/ "deceiving", ਸੰਸਾਰਸੵ /sənsaːɾəsjə/ "of the world", ਭਿਖੵਾ /pɪ̀kʰːjaː/ "(act of) begging", etc. There is also a conjunct form of the letter ''yayyā'', ਯ→੍ਯ, a later form, which functions similarly to the ''yakaśă'', and is used exclusively for Sanskrit borrowings, and even then rarely. In addition, miniaturized versions of the letters ਚ, ਟ, ਤ, and ਨ are also found in limited use as subscript letters in Sikh scripture.

Only the subjoined /ɾə/ and /hə/ are commonly used; usage of the subjoined /ʋə/ and conjoined forms of /jə/, already rare, is increasingly scarce in modern contexts.

Vowel diacritics

To express vowels (singular, ''sură''), Gurmukhī, as an abugida, makes use of obligatory diacritics called ''lagā̃''. Gurmukhī is similar to Brahmi scripts in that all consonants are followed by an inherent schwa sound. This inherent vowel sound can be changed by using dependent vowel signs which attach to a bearing consonant. In some cases, dependent vowel signs cannot be used – at the beginning of a word or syllable for instance – and so an independent vowel character is used instead.

Independent vowels are constructed using the three vowel-bearing characters: ੳ ''ūṛā'' , ਅ ''aiṛā'', and ੲ ''īṛī''. With the exception of ''aiṛā'' (which in isolation represents the vowel ), the bearer vowels are never used without additional vowel diacritics.

Vowels are always pronounced after the consonant they are attached to. Thus, ''siā̀rī'' is always written to the left, but pronounced after the character on the right. When constructing the independent vowel for , ''ūṛā'' takes an irregular form instead of using the usual ''hōṛā''.

Orthography

Gurmukhi orthography prefers vowel sequences over the use of semivowels ("y" or "w") intervocally and in syllable nuclei, as in the words ਦਿਸਾਇਆ ''disāiā'' "caused to be visible" rather than ''disāyā'', ਦਿਆਰ ''diāră'' "cedar" rather than ''dyāră'', and ਸੁਆਦ ''suādă'' "taste" rather than ''swādă'', permitting vowels in hiatus.

In terms of tone orthography, the short vowels �and � when paired with to yield /ɪh/ and /ʊh/, represent �and �with high tones respectively, e.g. ਕਿਹੜਾ ''kihṛā'' () 'which?' ਦੁਹਰਾ ''duhrā'' () "repeat, reiterate, double." The compounding of �ɦwith �or �yield �́ːand �́ːrespectively, e.g. ਮਹਿੰਗਾ ''mahingā'' () "expensive", ਵਹੁਟੀ ''vahuṭṭī'' () "bride."

Other signs

The diacritics for gemination and nasalization are together referred to as ਲਗਾਖਰ ''lagākkhară'' ("applied letters").

Gemination

The diacritic ਅੱਧਕ ''áddakă'' ( ੱ ) indicates that the following consonant is geminated, and is placed above the consonant preceding the geminated one. Consonant length is distinctive in the Punjabi language and the use of this diacritic can change the meaning of a word, as below:

It has not been standardized to be written in all instances of gemination; there is a strong tendency, especially in rural dialects, to also geminate consonants following a long vowel (/a:/, /e:/, /i:/, /o:/, /u:/, /ɛ:/, /ɔː/, which triggers shortening in these vowels) in the penult of a word, e.g. ਔਖਾ ''aukkhā'' "difficult", ਕੀਤੀ ''kī̆ttī'' "did", ਪੋਤਾ ''pō̆ttā'' "grandson", ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ''panjā̆bbī'' "Punjabi", ਹਾਕ ''hākă'' "call, shout", but plural ਹਾਕਾਂ ''hā̆kkā̃''.
Except in this case, where this unmarked gemination is often etymologically rooted in archaic forms, and has become phonotactically regular, the usage of the ''áddakă'' is obligatory.

It is also sometimes used to indicate second-syllable stress, e.g. ਬੱਚਾ ''ba'cā'', "save".

Nasalisation

The diacritics ਟਿੱਪੀ ''ṭippī'' ( ੰ ) and ਬਿੰਦੀ ''bindī'' ( ਂ ) are used for producing a nasal phoneme depending on the following obstruent or a nasal vowel at the end of a word. All short vowels are nasalized using ''ṭippī'' and all long vowels are nasalized using ''bindī'' except for ''dulaiṅkaṛă'' ( ੂ ), which uses ''ṭippī'' instead.

Older texts may follow other conventions.

Vowel suppression

The ਹਲੰਤ '' halantă'', or ਹਲੰਦ ''halandă'', ( ੍ U+0A4D) character is not used when writing Punjabi in Gurmukhī. However, it may occasionally be used in Sanskritised text or in dictionaries for extra phonetic information. When it is used, it represents the suppression of the inherent vowel.

The effect of this is shown below:

:ਕ –

:ਕ੍ –

Punctuation

The '' ḍaṇḍī'' (।) is used in Gurmukhi to mark the end of a sentence. A doubled ''ḍaṇḍī'', or ''doḍaṇḍī'' (॥) marks the end of a verse.

The '' visarga'' symbol (ਃ U+0A03) is used very occasionally in Gurmukhī. It can represent an abbreviation, as the period is used in English, though the period for abbreviation, like commas, exclamation points, and other Western punctuation, is freely used in modern Gurmukhī.

Numerals

Gurmukhī has its own set of digits, which function exactly as in other versions of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. These are used extensively in older texts. In modern contexts, they are sometimes replaced by standard Western Arabic numerals.

*In some Punjabi dialects, the word for three is ਤ੍ਰੈ ''trai'' ().

Glyphs

The scriptural symbol for the Sikh term ( U+0A74) is formed from ("1") and ("ō").

Palaeography

Vowels

In the earliest Gurmukhi texts, interpuncts in the form of a dot were used to mark a long "a" vowel. This would later develop into a ''kannā'' mark, where the initially used interpunct vowel marker becoming a longer mark that starts at the top of the line where the words are connected and moving down to cover the top half of the letter space. Shorter kanna marks are indicative of a work dating to an earlier period.

Spacing

Before the 1970s, Gurbani and other Sikh scriptures were written in the traditional ''scriptio continua'' method of writing the Gurmukhi script known as ਲੜੀਵਾਰ ''laṛīvāră'', where there were no spacing between words in the texts. This is opposed to the comparatively more recent method of writing in Gurmukhi known as ''padă chēdă'', which breaks the words by inserting spacing between them.

First line of the Guru Granth Sahib, the '' Mul Mantar,'' in ''laṛīvāră'' (continuous form) and ''padă chēdă'' (spaced form):

''laṛīvāră:'' ੴਸਤਿਨਾਮੁਕਰਤਾਪੁਰਖੁਨਿਰਭਉਨਿਰਵੈਰੁਅਕਾਲਮੂਰਤਿਅਜੂਨੀਸੈਭੰਗੁਰਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ॥

''padă chēdă:'' ੴ ਸਤਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਕਰਤਾ ਪੁਰਖੁ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ ਅਕਾਲ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਅਜੂਨੀ ਸੈਭੰ ਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ॥

Transliteration: ''ikku ōaṅkāru sati nāmu karatā purakhu nirapàu niravairu akāla mūrati ajūnī saipàṅ gura prasādi''

Styles

Various historical styles and fonts, or ਸ਼ੈਲੀ ''śailī'', of Gurmukhi script have evolved and been identified. A list of some of them is as follows:

# ''purātana'' ("old") style
# ''ardha śikastā'' ("half-broken") style
# ''śikastā'' ("broken") style (including ''Anandpur Lipi'')
# ''Kaśmīrī'' style
# ''Damdamī'' style

Unicode

Gurmukhī script was added to the Unicode Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

Many sites still use proprietary fonts that convert Latin ASCII codes to Gurmukhī glyphs.

The Unicode block for Gurmukhī is U+0A00–U+0A7F:

Digitization

Manuscripts

Panjab Digital Library has taken up digitization of all available manuscripts of Gurmukhī Script. The script has been in formal use since the 1500s, and a lot of literature written within this time period is still traceable. Panjab Digital Library has digitized over 45 million pages from different manuscripts and most of them are available online.

Internet domain names

Punjabi University Patiala has developed label generation rules for validating international domain names for internet in Gurmukhi.

See also

* Punjabi Braille
* Shahmukhi alphabet

Notes

References

Bibliography

*
:*
:*.
*
*
*
*
The following Punjabi-language publications have been written on the origins of the Gurmukhī script:

Alternative link
*Ishar Singh Tãgh ''Gurmukhi Lipi da Vigyamulak Adhiyan.'' Patiala: Jodh Singh Karamjit Singh.
*Kala Singh Bedi ''Lipi da Vikas.'' Patiala: Punjabi University, 1995.
*

Alternative link
*Prem Parkash Singh "Gurmukhi di Utpati." ''Khoj Patrika'', Patiala: Punjabi University.
*Pritam Singh "Gurmukhi Lipi." ''Khoj Patrika''. p. 110, vol.36, 1992. Patiala: Punjabi University.
*Sohan Singh Galautra. ''Punjab dian Lipiã.''
*Tarlochan Singh Bedi ''Gurmukhi Lipi da Janam te Vikas.'' Patiala: Punjabi University, 1999.

External links

Unicode script chart for Gurmukhi (PDF file)

Gurmukhi Typewriter Online

Online Shahmukhi - Gurmukhi and Gurmukhi - Shahmukhi text Conversion tool

Online Punjabi Dictionary in both Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gurmukhi alphabet
Gurmukhī script