Mahajani is a Laṇḍā mercantile script that was historically used in northern India for writing accounts and financial records in Marwari, Hindi and Punjabi. It is a Brahmic script and is written left-to-right. Mahajani refers to the Hindi word for 'bankers', also known as 'sarrafi' or 'kothival' (merchant).
Names
There are various names for the script based upon region, such as Marwari, Sarafi, Rajasthani, Baniaie, Landa or Mudia/Modiya.23
History
Mahajani has been used as a primary accounting script for Marwari traders and for the use of Hindi and Punjabi in a wide region across northwest India and eastern Pakistan. It was taught in merchant schools as part of the education system. A vast majority of documents in which it is found are financial documents, in addition to primers. Its use has been reported by bookkeepers in Haryana as the Langdi script, although its relationship with Langdi is uncertain. Mahajani descended from Landa scripts in the greater Punjab region in historic times and was well known as a merchant's script throughout north India. It may have also been influenced by Kaithi and Devanagari.4 The script was promoted by the colonial military establishment.5
Characters
It has fewer vowels than most North Indian scripts, and the use of them is optional. The vowels i and u can represent both their short and long forms in addition to diphthongs and related vowels. Since vowels are optional, they must be interpreted in context for most Mahajani texts. There are no special conjunct consonant forms, and there are no viramas to indicate them. Nasalization, if indicated, is typically represented by 'na'. It also has various fraction marks, accounting marks, and textual organization marks, to indicate paragraph and word spacing, and abbreviation, punctuation, and space marks. As many Mahajani texts are accounting books, accounting symbols have been found, but they are undergoing further research for proper encoding. It also uses a Devanagari-like baseline only to mark title headings on texts, not like in Devanagari where the baseline is an integral part of the characters. Some characters also have glyphic variants, which can be found in greater detail in the Unicode proposal.
Vowels
| 𑅐a, āIPA: [ɐ], [ɑː] | 𑅑i, īIPA: [i], [iː] | 𑅒u, ūIPA: [u], [uː] | 𑅓e/ē, aiIPA: [eː], [ɑj] | 𑅔o/ō, auIPA: [oː], [ɑw] |
Consonants
| 𑅕kaIPA: [k] | 𑅖khaIPA: [kʰ] | 𑅗gaIPA: [ɡ] | 𑅘ghaIPA: [ɡʱ] | 𑅙caIPA: [tʃ] | 𑅚chaIPA: [tʃʰ] | 𑅛jaIPA: [dʒ] | 𑅜jhaIPA: [dʒʱ] | 𑅝ñaIPA: [ɲ] | |
| 𑅞ṭaIPA: [ʈ] | 𑅟ṭhaIPA: [ʈʰ] | 𑅠ḍaIPA: [ɖ] | 𑅡ḍhaIPA: [ɖʱ] | 𑅢ṇaIPA: [ɳ] | 𑅣taIPA: [t̪] | 𑅤thaIPA: [t̪ʰ] | 𑅥daIPA: [d̪] | 𑅦dhaIPA: [d̪ʱ] | 𑅧naIPA: [n] |
| 𑅨paIPA: [p] | 𑅩phaIPA: [pʰ] | 𑅪baIPA: [b] | 𑅫bhaIPA: [bʱ] | 𑅬maIPA: [m] | 𑅭raIPA: [r] | 𑅮laIPA: [l] | 𑅯vaIPA: [ʋ] | 𑅰saIPA: [s] | 𑅱haIPA: [ɦ] |
Unicode
Main article: Mahajani (Unicode block)
Mahajani script was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.
The Unicode block for Mahajani is U+11150–U+1117F:
| Mahajani[1][2]Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| U+1115x | 𑅐 | 𑅑 | 𑅒 | 𑅓 | 𑅔 | 𑅕 | 𑅖 | 𑅗 | 𑅘 | 𑅙 | 𑅚 | 𑅛 | 𑅜 | 𑅝 | 𑅞 | 𑅟 |
| U+1116x | 𑅠 | 𑅡 | 𑅢 | 𑅣 | 𑅤 | 𑅥 | 𑅦 | 𑅧 | 𑅨 | 𑅩 | 𑅪 | 𑅫 | 𑅬 | 𑅭 | 𑅮 | 𑅯 |
| U+1117x | 𑅰 | 𑅱 | 𑅲 | 𑅳 | 𑅴 | 𑅵 | 𑅶 | |||||||||
| Notes1.^ As of Unicode version 16.02.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points | ||||||||||||||||
Further reading
- Lal, Lala Gangadas Munsi. Mahajani-Sara-Hissaavvala-Va-Doyama (in Hindi). Delhi.
- Lal, Shri (1875). Mahajan-Sara (in Hindi).
References
Pandey, Anshuman (2011-07-12). "N4126: Proposal to Encode the Mahajani Script in ISO/IEC 10646" (PDF). Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2011/11274-n4126-mahajani.pdf ↩
INFLIBNET Centre https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/epgpdata/uploads/epgp_content/S000016FS/P000695/M006293/ET/1516250519FSC_P8_M26_e-text.pdf. Mahajani script which is also known as Marwari, sarafi, rajasthani, baniaie, landa or mudia is mainly used by the business people in the business transaction. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/epgpdata/uploads/epgp_content/S000016FS/P000695/M006293/ET/1516250519FSC_P8_M26_e-text.pdf ↩
Sarna, Jasbir Singh (6 March 2022). "Major scripts of the world". Punjab News Express. Retrieved 12 June 2025. Apart from the above scripts, there has been a lot of use of Sharda, Takri, Mahajani or Lande script among the traders of Punjab. The script was free of clutter and unattractive. It is also called Sarafi or Mahajani akhar. The same script was used in the hill valleys and in the Punjab. Pandit Gauri Shankar has evaluated about a hundred merchant scripts in India. In Punjab, Sarafi, Mahajani, Khoja, Arora, Lamma-Vasi, Multani, Bahawalpuri, Prachi, Uchhi, Rohri, Sindhi, Sarika, Thali and Kirki etc. are used in various accounts. This is the modified form of all Landis. Takri is similar to Landis. The only difference is that Takri is a perverted form of Sharda and Gurmukhi Landiya's modified form . https://www.punjabnewsexpress.com/news/news/major-scripts-of-the-world-161093 ↩
Pandey, Anshuman (2011-07-12). "N4126: Proposal to Encode the Mahajani Script in ISO/IEC 10646" (PDF). Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2011/11274-n4126-mahajani.pdf ↩
Anushree, Anubha (8 September 2023). "Rethinking India's Manuscript Practices as Official Policy Undervalues Its Rich Heritage". The Wire. Retrieved 11 June 2025. Mahajani was promoted by the colonial military and was widely used to record day-to-day transactions in various parts of western and northern India. https://thewire.in/history/rethinking-manuscript-practices-in-india ↩