Mahajani
Script details
See all script details: code, region, status and more
| Code | Mahj |
| Script type | alphabet |
| Region | Indic |
| Status | Historical |
| Direction | LTR |
| Baseline | unspecified |
| Case | no |
| White space | unspecified |
| Complex behaviors | |
| OpenType code | mahj |
| ISO 15924 Numeric Code / Key | 314 (alphasyllabic) |
Script description
The Mahajani script was a commercial script (महाजन mahajana is the Hindi word for ‘banker’) used across Northern India until the middle of the 20th century.
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It was used by speakers of a number of languages, including Hindi, Marwari and Punjabi, and was taught in special merchant- and business-focused schools alongside other skills required for conducting business.
Mahajani functions as an alphabet, but also displays some characteristics of an abugida. In theory, consonant letters contain an inherent [a] vowel, but there are no vowel diacritics to modify this vowel, so each consonant letter can also be used to represent a following [i], [i:], [u], [u:], [e], [o], [ai], or [au]. There are, however, independent vowel letters, which can be written after the consonant to indicate either that a vowel immediately follows the consonant or that a vowel follows the [a] inherent in that consonant. This means that the sequence ka + o can represent either [ko] or [kao]. Consonant clusters are equally ambiguous when written. There is no visible virama to cancel a post-consonantal vowel, so the elements of a consonant cluster are written sequentially using the full forms of regular consonant letters. So the sequence ka + ra can represent either [kra] or [kara]. This means that, in general, the value of a consonant must be inferred at the morphological level.
The term ‘mahajani’ is also sometimes applied to a merchant-specific style of writing another Indic script. For example, Mahajani Gujarati refers to the Gujarati script as it is used by Gujarati-speaking merchants. In this case, the characteristics of the Mahajani script proper may not be present.
Languages that use this script
| Language | Writing System Code | Writing System Status | SLDR/CLDR locale | Regional variants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hindi | hi-Mahj | in use | hi-Mahj-IN (India) | |
| Lahnda | lah-Mahj | in use | lah-Mahj-IN (India) | |
| Marwari | mwr-Mahj | in use | mwr-Mahj-IN (India) | |
| Punjabi, Eastern | pa-Mahj | in use | pa-Mahj-IN (India) |
Unicode status
In The Unicode Standard, Mahajani script implementation is discussed in Chapter 15 South and Central Asia-IV — Other Historic Scripts
.
Resources
- ScriptSource page for Mahajani - all about scripts, languages, and writing systems
- Wikipedia article on Mahajani