Jajja and a Language Written in Three Scripts

Punjabi is unusual in being written today in three different scripts by three different communities. Gurmukhi is used in Indian Punjab and is the script of Sikh scripture and of Punjabi education there. West of the border, in Pakistani Punjab, Punjabi is written in Shahmukhi, a Perso-Arabic script running right to left. Punjabi Hindus have also written the language in Devanagari. The division is not a matter of dialect, since the spoken language crosses the border with little change; it is a matter of which literary and religious tradition a community writes from.

One consequence is that a Punjabi speaker in Lahore may be unable to read a Punjabi book printed in Amritsar, and the reverse, so the same literature has to be transcribed to circulate. Letters like Jajja sit at the centre of that work, because the dotted extensions that Gurmukhi added for Perso-Arabic sounds are exactly the sounds Shahmukhi writes natively, and the mapping between the two scripts is cleanest where those extensions exist and roughest where they do not. Transcription between the scripts is an established scholarly and publishing activity rather than an occasional exercise. The three script situation also affects what counts as Punjabi literature, since a body of writing that exists only in Shahmukhi may be unknown to readers on the other side of the border and the reverse, and much of the scholarly effort of the last century has gone into moving texts across.