Gurmukhi

Gurmukhi is a Unicode block containing characters for the Punjabi language, as it is written in India. In its original incarnation, the code points U+0A02..U+0A4C were a direct copy of the Gurmukhi characters A2-EC from the 1988 ISCII standard. The Devanagari  0900–097F , Bengali  0980–09FF , Gujarati  0A80–0AFF , Oriya  0B00–0B7F , Tâmil  0B80–0BFF , Telugu  0C00–0C7F , Kannada  0C80–0CFF , and Malayalam  0D00–0D7F blocks were similarly all based on their ISCII encodings.

Gurmukhi is the most common script used for writing the Punjabi language in India. An abugida derived from the Laṇḍā script and ultimately descended from Brahmi, Gurmukhi was standardised by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad, in the 16th century. The whole of the Guru Granth Sahib's 1430 pages are written in this script. The name Gurmukhi is derived from the Old Punjabi term “gurumukhī”, meaning “from the mouth of the Guru”.

Modern Gurmukhi has thirty-eight consonants (vianjan), nine vowel symbols (lāga mātrā), two symbols for nasal sounds (bindī and ṭippī), and one symbol which duplicates the sound of any consonant (addak). In addition, four conjuncts are used: three subjoined forms of the consonants Rara, Haha and Vava, and one half-form of Yayya. Use of the conjunct forms of Vava and Yayya is increasingly scarce in modern contexts.

Gurmukhi is primarily used in the Punjab state of India where it is the sole official script for all official and judicial purposes. The script is also widely used in the Indian states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and the national capital of Delhi, with Punjabi being one of the official languages in these states. Gurmukhi has been adapted to write other languages, such as Braj Bhasha, Khariboli (and other Hindustani dialects), Sanskrit and Sindhi.