Ura in the Scribal Tradition

The vowels built on Ura open a great many of the words that recur through the Guru Granth Sahib, and the letter also carries a weight out of proportion to its frequency, because the sign that stands at the head of the scripture is built from it. Ik Onkar, the opening figure of the Sikh scripture and of most Sikh compositions, joins the numeral one to the Onkar sign, and the vowel in Onkar is the one Gurmukhi writes on Ura. That emblem is reproduced more often than any other piece of Gurmukhi writing, carved over gurdwara doorways, worked into metal and cloth, and set at the head of manuscripts and printed editions alike, so the outline of Ura is among the most widely seen letterforms in the Punjab.

Copying the Guru Granth Sahib is governed by strict discipline, because Sikh practice treats the physical volume as a living Guru rather than as a book about one, and a scribe gives the bearers the same exactness as any consonant: a bearer set wrong changes the word, and the word is the point. The bearers also survived the move from pen to type with less alteration than most letters. Their outlines are simple, they take few joins with their neighbours, and when Gurmukhi was first cut as metal type in the nineteenth century the shapes that needed the most compromise were the conjuncts and the subjoined forms rather than Ura and its two companions.