Ходжаки әліпбиі: тарихы мен қолданылуы

Abugida script
the script

Khojkī, Khojakī, or Khwājā Sindhī ( (Arabic script) खोजकी (Devanagari)), is a script used formerly and almost exclusively by the Khoja community of parts of the Indian subcontinent, including Sindh, Gujarat, and Punjab. However, this script also had a further reach and was used by members of Ismaili communities from Burma to East and South Africa. The name "Khojki" is likely derived from the Persian word khoja, which means "master", or "lord". As a scholarly article from 2022 has demonstrated, referring to the script as "Khojki" is a relatively new phenomenon, coined by the Russian scholar Wladimir Ivanow., This neologism began to replace the original terms used by Ismailis such as Sindhi and (when necessary to distinguish it from other forms of Sindhi script) Khwajah Sindhi. By this, they did not necessarily mean the Sindhi language, but rather the script utilized by their community, known as the Khwajahs or Khojas. To avoid confusion, the British administrative bureaucracy added the term Khwajah, referring to the script as "Khwajah Sindhi" The Ismailis sometimes did the same to distinguish the script from the language, as well as from other scripts used in Sindh. The Khwajah Ismaili community continued using the traditional term ‘Sindhi’ alongside the neologism ‘Khojki.’ However, many scholars writing in English and other Western languages dropped the traditional term ‘Sindhi’ was adopting the invented term ‘Khojki.’

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

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. Dr. 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. However, it is important to note that 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 scrip 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 auspice 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." 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.

As is explained by Michel Boivin, for the contemporary Khoja community, because the gināns are at the core of the Khoja religious heritage, "they quickly became a crucial stake in the process of identity construction." Asani argues that "in the Ismaili case the adoption of the Khojkī script, a ‘local’ script, was probably part of the attempt to make religious literature more accessible by recording it in a script with which the local population had the greatest familiarity." In reflecting upon the larger history of the script and the literary tradition Asani also posits several other reasons as to why Khojkī was adopted and continuously refined by the local Ismaili community:<blockquote> by providing an exclusive means of written expression commonly shared by Ismailis living in the three regions (Sind, Punjab and Gujrat), was influential in the development of the cohesion and self identity within a widely scattered and linguistically diverse religious community. No doubt the script facilitated the flow and the transmission of religious literature from one area to another. Use of the script may have also served to confine religious literature within the community—this precaution being necessary to avoid persecution from outsiders not in agreement with the community’s doctrines and practices. In this respect, Khojkī may have served the same purpose as the secret languages, such as the so called Balabailān language, used by Muslim mystics to hide their more esoteric thoughts from the common people.