Kakka in the Scribal Tradition

Kakka is the letter used to demonstrate the mechanism that most distinguishes a Brahmic script from an alphabet, the conjunct. When two consonants meet with no vowel between them, Gurmukhi does not simply write them in sequence; the second may be written in a reduced form beneath the first. Gurmukhi kept only three such subjoined forms where its Indic relatives kept many, those of Haha, Rara and Vava, and the reduction is one of the practical simplifications that made the script quick to learn and quick to write. Kakka takes those subjoined letters and is therefore among the commonest first members of a conjunct on a scriptural page.

The headline is what makes the arrangement work: because the letters hang from an unbroken bar, a subjoined form can be tucked into the space below without disturbing the line, and the word still reads as one unit. Early Gurmukhi type had to reproduce that behaviour with metal sorts, which is why the conjuncts, rather than the plain letters, were the part of the script that printing found hardest, and why the earliest printed Gurmukhi looks stiffest exactly where a manuscript hand looks most fluent. The reduction from many conjuncts to three is one of the things that separates Gurmukhi from Devanagari most visibly on the page. A Devanagari text carries stacked forms throughout; a Gurmukhi one is almost flat, which makes it faster to write, easier to set and easier to read at small sizes.