Khojki script

The landā or ‘clipped’ alphabets were primarily employed as commercial and mercantile scripts by various Hindu communities of Sindh and Punjab. The Khojkī script was employed primarily to record Shia Ismaili religious and devotional Islamic literature; most notably in the form of poetry called gināns (a term derived from the Sanskrit jnāna meaning contemplative knowledge). It is one of the two Landā scripts used for liturgy, the other being the Gurmukhī alphabet, which is associated with Sikhism.

The Khojkī script was one of the earliest forms of written Sindhi. It was formerly and almost exclusively by the Khoja Ismaili community. As a scholarly article from 2022 has demonstrated, referring to the script as "Khojki" is a relatively new phenomenon, coined by the Russian scholar Vladimir Ivanow. This neologism began to replace the original terms used by Khoja Ismailis such as Sindhī and Khojā Sindhī. This did not necessarily mean the Sindhi language but rather the script utilized by the Khojas. To avoid confusion, the British administrative bureaucracy added the term Khojā, referring to the script as Khojā Sindhī. The Khoja Ismailis sometimes did the same to distinguish the script from the language, as well as from other scripts used in Sindh. The Khojas continued using the traditional term Sindhī alongside the neologism Khojkī. However, many scholars writing in English and other Western languages dropped the traditional term Sindhī was adopted the invented term Khojkī.

History and evolution of the script

According to the Nizari Ismaili tradition Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, the 15th-century dā’ī (preacher), invented the Khojkī script. While it is now firmly established through epigraphic evidence that the script predates the arrival of the dā’ī in the form of the Lohānākī or Lārī script, scholars argue that it is very likely that Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn did in fact play a pivotal role in the evolution, refinement, and the more widespread use of the script. Ali Asani, a leading scholar of Ismaili literature and one of the very few academics to systematically study Khojkī manuscripts concludes: "we may surmise that Khojkī is most likely a polished or more developed form of Lohānakī with the legendary Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn perhaps having played a role in its evolution."

The early versions of this script were primarily used for trade and mercantilist documentation and by their nature were not well equipped to record literature. Several main issues included: a very limited vowel system, lack of separation between words, inconsistent orthography, together with redundant and ambiguous characters. Despite the apparent deficiencies of the script, this did not mean that there were not already widespread local literary traditions, but rather that they existed primarily in oral forms. Over time solutions to some of these major issues were introduced into the script, with one of the most significant being the development of medial vowel marks called lākanā. A colon-like form of punctuation was also introduced to distinguish between words. Although these developments came rather early and facilitated the recording of gināns, based on manuscript evidence, it can be inferred that the script was continuously evolving right up until the late 19th century. However, it was a common practice for old and deteriorating manuscripts to be respectfully destroyed upon being recopied, thus making tracing the evolution of the script across time a challenge. Apart from the unknown number of manuscripts in private collections, there are currently three institutional collections at the ITREB-Pakistan (Ismaili Tariqa and Religious Education Board) in Karachi, at the IIS (Institute of Ismaili Studies) in London, and at Harvard University.

In adapting to new printing technologies, the Khojkī script entered a new stage of its development in the early 20th century under the auspices of Lāljī Devrājī, who compiled, edited, and published a range of materials in Khojkī through his Khoja Sindhi Printing Press in Bombay. Despite these efforts to utilize various new printing technologies, Dr. Asani reflects that "ironically, the introduction of printing may have also sounded the deathknell for the script." Several factors contributed to this decline. During the early 20th century, the "publication of religious literature was centralized and brought under the control of community institutions." While on the one hand this larger institutional backing aided in more widespread availability and distribution of texts in Khojkī. On the other, "regional variations were a serious problem" because of the "lack of uniformity in the script in different geographical areas." Additionally, efforts made by the Ismaili Imamate institution to standardize rituals and shift away from the more "Indic" elements that became part of religious, cultural, and linguistic identity of Khoja communities also played a significant role in the shift away from using the Khojkī script. Even though Khojkī is no longer a "living script" access to this corpus can provide unique insights into the ways in which the Ismaili tradition grew and adapted in this specific cultural context, as well as offering insights into how this community envisioned and constructed their own history and identity.