ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਸਿੱਖੋ

Gurmukhi belongs to the great family of Indian scripts that descend from Brahmi, the script of the Ashokan edicts of the 3rd century BCE. Its closest ancestors are the Sharada script of Kashmir and the Punjab hills and the Landa ('tailless') scripts that merchants across Punjab used for keeping accounts. The Landa scripts were quick to write but left out most vowel signs, so a word could be read in several ways. A script that would carry sacred poetry needed to be clear and complete.

That clarity came in the 16th century. Guru Nanak Dev Ji (1469-1539) already used these letters, and his hymn Patti in Raag Asa (Ang 432) is built on the alphabet, one verse for each letter. His successor, Guru Angad Dev Ji (Guruship 1539-1552), is honoured as the one who standardised the script: he fixed the shapes and order of the 35 letters, settled the vowel signs so that every sound could be written exactly, and taught the script to children at Khadur Sahib. The Painti Akhari, the '35 letters', has been learned in the same seven rows ever since.

The name Gurmukhi means 'from the mouth of the Guru' (ਗੁਰੂ + ਮੁਖ). It reflects the script's purpose: to record the Guru's spoken word, the Bani, exactly as it was uttered, so that it could be sung and read by ordinary people rather than kept in a priestly language. Choosing a local script for scripture was itself a statement that the divine word belongs to everyone.

In 1604 Guru Arjan Dev Ji compiled the Adi Granth at Amritsar, with Bhai Gurdas Ji as scribe, writing the hymns of the Gurus and of saints from across India in a single script, Gurmukhi, even though the languages range from Punjabi and Braj to Persian and Sanskrit-influenced Sant Bhasha. Guru Gobind Singh Ji added the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji and in 1708 installed the Granth as the eternal Guru. Every Sri Guru Granth Sahib has the same 1430 Angs with the same words in the same places, and it is read in Gurmukhi in every Gurdwara in the world.

Punjabi today has well over 100 million speakers and is among the ten most spoken languages on earth. In Pakistan, where most Punjabi speakers live, the language is usually written in Shahmukhi, a Perso-Arabic script, while in India it is written in Gurmukhi. Gurmukhi is the official script of the state of Punjab (India) under the Punjab Official Language Act of 1967 and is widely used in Haryana, Delhi and Chandigarh, as well as by the large Punjabi communities of Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and East Africa.

Gurmukhi moved from manuscript to print in the 19th century and into computers with its own Unicode block in 1991, so it can be typed, searched and displayed on any modern device. For a learner, the reward is direct: once you can read the 35 letters and ten vowel signs, you can open Sri Guru Granth Sahib and read the Guru's words in the very script that was shaped to carry them.