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Kashmiri Script - A Historical Decision
Kshir Bhawani Times
Kashmiri Pandit Sabha, Jammu, February 1996
- Dr. R. L. Shant
Our readers are well aware of the efforts being made to
bring alignment in the work that
 organizations like Koshur Samachar, Kashyap
Samachar Delhi (now Kshir Bhawani Times, Jammu) and the linguists in various
cities are doing in the area of use of Devanagari script for writing Kashmiri.
Individual opinions have also been published in various journals in Delhi and
Jammu from time to time. Many important meetings were also held last December
with the same objective and ultimately this project was entrusted to the
“Vikalp” minister. He formed a committee to produce a consolidated report of the
opinions of linguistic script expert representatives from Delhi and Jammu. The
members of this committee were M/S Shambhu Nath Bhat “Halim”, Chaman Lal Sapru,
Ratan Lal Shant and Hari Krishna Kaul, the “Vikalp” minister. The committee
evaluated various opinions held and expressed from time to time and came to the
following conclusions:
1. This is a crucial time for the Kashmiri speaking people
because they have decided that in order to protect and preserve their literature
and culture, they will have to adopt the Devanagari script because this is the
only script that can bring together the Kashmiri speaking people on an all India
level.
2. Efforts made hitherto by various scholars and relevant
organizations to adapt Devanagari script for Kashmiri language establishes the
fact that there is unanimity amongst all on the suitability of this script and
the desire to come up with a standardized version of the same.
3. The standardization effort will need to keep in mind that,
to the extent possible, the additional symbols we adopt should be already in
use, familiar to the readers and writers and be scientific. Above all they
should be applicable to the Kashmiri spellings and sounds.
4. It is not possible to establish new symbols for the
exclusive use in Kashmiri at this time given the fact that hardly any Kashmiri
books are currently being published in Devanagari script. We should also stay
away from any special symbols which any particular publisher may have
established. We should use only those symbols which are most prevalent. Among
such symbols, the most important ones are those which are being used by “Koshur
Samachar” and “Kshir Bhawani Times”.
5. We should decide on these special symbols after comparing
our needs with what is available on keyboards currently.
6. When using the symbols of an established script for more
than one language, the symbols essentially become ‘modifiers’ which modify a
vowel of one language to represent another sound of another language. Sometimes
an “ardhachandra” and sometimes an “apostrophe” has been used to modify the
Hindi vowels to produce a Kashmiri sound. This has enabled some to easily adapt
Devanagari script in writing Kashmiri but the unnecessary and uncontrolled use
of these modifiers by most writers has raised a question mark on the very
correctness of these modifiers. Keeping this in mind, consensus was reached on
the use of ‘ardhachandra’, ‘apostrophe’ and an old symbol ‘s’. Therefore, it was
decided that instead of using only one modifier we should use two or three
symbols which can allow us to represent ‘diphthongs’ (vowel pairs). Hence the
following will be the ‘swarmala’ for Kashmiri:
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Click here
Kashmiri
Script - A Historical Decision for rest of the article.
(Translated by Mr.Manoj Kaul)
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