Gurmukhi

Origin

The name means from the Guru's mouth. The script derives from Landa, a family of mercantile shorthands used by traders in the north-west, which lacked vowel marking and was ambiguous outside a known context. Guru Angad regularised it, added vowel signs and fixed the letter order, producing a script adequate to record scripture precisely.

It is related to Sharada, the older script of Kashmir and the north-west, and belongs to the wider Brahmi-derived family.

Consequence

The decision had effects beyond convenience. It gave the community a script that was neither the Devanagari of brahmanical learning nor the Persian of Mughal administration, and so an independent vehicle for its texts. It made the scripture legible to traders and cultivators rather than to a learned class alone, which matched the Gurus' rejection of religious specialists.

Written Punjabi as a literary language effectively dates from this standardisation, and the Guru Granth Sahib is its foundational text.

Present use

Gurmukhi is the official script of Punjabi in Indian Punjab, used for administration, education, journalism and literature by Punjabi speakers of any religion. In Pakistani Punjab, Punjabi is written in the Perso-Arabic Shahmukhi script instead, so that the same language is written in two scripts on either side of the border — a division that has substantially limited literary exchange between the two Punjabs since 1947.