ABSTRACT
The emergence of the Gurmukhi (Panjabi) script is closely associated with the rise of the Sikh religion in the sixteenth century. Earlier, the defective North Indian script known as Landa had been used for Old Panjabi texts. The earliest Sikh teachers set about improving and rationalizing Landa on the Devanāgarī model. Thus enhanced, the guru-mukhī (literally, 'from the mouth of the teacher') script was used to write the text of the Adi Granth, the 'Original Book' of the Sikh religion, containing hymns by Guru Nānak (1469-1539), Arjan (1563-1606) and several other teachers. Gurmukhi is the script now used for the Panjabi language in India. In Pakistan, Panjabi is written in the Arabo-Persian character. The accompanying table shows the consonantal inventory of Indian Panjabi.
