The Takri script is an abugida

Abugida

An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...

 writing system of the Brahmic family

Brahmic family

The Brahmic or Indic scripts are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia , Southeast Asia, and parts of Central and East Asia, and are descended from the Brāhmī script of the ancient Indian subcontinent...

 of scripts. It is closely related to, and derived from, the Sharada script employed by Kashmiri

Kashmiri language

Kashmiri is a language from the Dardic sub-group and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir. There are approximately 5,554,496 speakers in Jammu and Kashmir, according to the Census of 2001. Most of the 105,000 speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir...

. It is also related to the Gurmukhī script

Gurmukhi script

Gurmukhi is the most common script used for writing the Punjabi language. An abugida derived from the Laṇḍā script and ultimately descended from Brahmi, Gurmukhi was standardized by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad Dev Ji, in the 16th century. The whole of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji's 1430...

 used to write Punjabi

Punjabi language

Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...

. Until the late 1940s, Takri was the official script for writing the Dogri language

Dogri language

Dogri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about five million people in Pakistan and India, chiefly in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, but also in northern Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, other parts of Jammu and Kashmir, and elsewhere. Dogri speakers are called Dogras, and the Dogri-speaking...

 in the state of Jammu and Kashmir

Jammu and Kashmir

Jammu and Kashmir is the northernmost state of India. It is situated mostly in the Himalayan mountains. Jammu and Kashmir shares a border with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south and internationally with the People's Republic of China to the north and east and the...

. Takri has historically been used by a number of Pahari

Pahari languages

The Pahari languages are a geographic group of Indic languages spoken in the lower ranges of the Himalayas, from Nepal in the east to the Indian states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir in the west.-Classification:The Pahari languages fall into three groups:*Eastern, consisting...

, Nepali

Nepali language

Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...

 and Dardic languages in the Western Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

, such as Gaddi or Gaddki (the language of the Gaddi

Gaddi (ethnic group)

The Gaddi are a tribe living mainly in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. They are Hindus and belong to several castes including Ahir, Brahmin,...

 ethnic group), Kashtwari (the dialect centered around the Kashtwar or Kishtwar

Kishtwar

Kishtwar is a town and a notified area committee in Kishtwar District in Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of India.-Geography:Kishtwar is located at...

 region of Jammu and Kashmir) and Chamiyali (the language of the Chamba

Chamba, Himachal Pradesh

Chamba is an ancient town in the Chamba district in the state of Himachal Pradesh, in northern India. According to the 2001 Indian census, Chamba has a population of 20,312 people...

 region of Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh is a state in Northern India. It is spread over , and is bordered by the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Punjab on the west and south-west, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the south, Uttarakhand on the south-east and by the Tibet Autonomous Region on the east...

). Takri used to be most prevalent script for business records and communication in various parts of Himachal Pradesh including Chintpurni, Una, Kangra, Bilaspur, and Hamirpur regions. The aged businessmen can still be found using Takri in these areas, but newer generation has now shifted to Devnagri and even English (Roman). This shift can be traced to have happened during the period ranging from 1950s to 1980s.

Proposed Unicode Support

There is a project to encode the Takri script in the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 standard, for which Anshuman Pandey has submitted a proposal to the Unicode Technical Committee. Takri was accepted for encoding at the range U+11680..U+116CF of the SMP and has been included in the version 6.1.0 beta release. It is anticipated to be formally released in February 2012.

Revival Movements

Since Takri fell into disuse, there have been sporadic attempts to revive the script in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh states. Kashtwari and Kulluvi are two languages for which recent efforts have been made.

External resources

• The Takri alphabet, http://ancientscripts.com/takri.html
• Examples of Takri usage on Kashmir state stamps, http://www.kashmirstamps.ca/DogriGloss.html
• Comparative examples of Takri and related scripts (Spanish language website), http://www.proel.org/alfabetos/takri.html
• A discussion of the Gaddi, with a reference to Takri, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5625318
• Ancient script of the Himalayas fights for survival, http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=275913&sid=FTP