Tankari - The Commercial Lingua Franca

 Tankari - The Commercial Lingua Franca.

Tankari is a script that is widely used by retailers and wholesale merchants in Northern India. Now, laptops and terminals are everywhere, so the Tankari has been relegated to second place. Up to the partition of 1947, Urdu was the language of communication of an ordinary man. English was the master language of the British and also widely used by the bureaucrats. Only a few people could converse or communicate in English because English language instruction was limited, hence the Urdu language was commonly used in Punjab. Business people used Tankari to communicate, conduct business, record financial transactions and keep business records. So much so that all everyday records of the State of Kangra, Jaswan and other hill states were maintained in Tankari. The language was widely used in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and to my surprise, I discovered that grain dealers in Rajasthan record their transactions in Tankari too.

Tankari is an emanation from the Sharda script and began to evolve around the thirteenth century. There was decree of the Muslim rulers of Northern India that prohibited the Hindu school system and also the construction of temples, educational ‘Muths’ on public lands and much more. It resulted in Brahmins getting educated in ‘Muths’ far away from Muslim influences like Jagarnath Puri, North of Haridwar etc. Hence Sanskrit and Hindi in Devanagari script survived. The business society depended entirely on its own means to learn and conduct business. That's how the Tankari's script began to evolve. It heavily borrowed from Sharda script and an independent alphabet evolved. It is not certain, but pretty well known that The evolution of Gurmukhi followed on the similar lines by Guru Angad Devji. But there was a problem that the evolution of Tankari omitted to include Vowels in the evolution. Hence even today the language has no Vowels. It is left to the reader to apply his own meaning to include vowels as he reads the passage. In money transactions, vowels were of lesser importance. And this is the way the Tankari script which is written in Shimla Hills including most of the hill states began to use this script. Other areas like Jammu, Eastern Punjab probably parts of Rajasthan adopted it to conduct business. The more sophisticated Sanskrit and Hindi stayed as the Lingua Franca of the educated people as all India’s ancient scriptures were written in it.

Tankari is easy to learn hence all merchants (wholesalers, retailers, money lender, business brokers) learnt it at home and became well versed in it by the time they were15 years of age. I have some documents predating 18th century, which are easily read by later generations. My relatives who are businessmen, in Delhi when I was a boy, were using it in their daily transactions. 

One funny incident happened which I wish to relate about Shimla and Tankari. This happened in 1967 when, as a young engineer, I was posted to Kota, Rajasthan, following a two-year stay in Delhi. My father was very worried about my well-being in a far away place, Kota. To alleviate his own worries and mine as well, he asked around and then gave me a private letter addressed in Tankari to a businessman in Delhi, Sabzi Mandi, requesting his help for me to settle down in Kota. Since I was in Delhi, I presented the letter to him. He said that he had no knowledge of Kota as a place, but he had business dealings with two business houses there. He would be delighted to write a note to them, if I wished. I jumped on his suggestion and requested him to write one. An hour later I got his Tankari written note addressed to a certain Lalaji in the city. Two weeks later when I reached Kota, I located that Lalaji to whom the note was addressed in the thickest of a Mandi in Kota, I presented him the note. The head Lalaji, read the note and left for an outing. In fact, it was not an outing, he had gone to do my work. He came back an hour later and advised me that my accommodations has been arranged. He knew that a certain house in the choicest locality was under construction and he had gone to talk to the owner. Following his recommendation, all issues to rent were settled without any preconditions and I moved in with my other colleague into the new house a week later. The point of this story is that a note written in Tankari was read in Delhi and their note written in Tankari, was read in Kota. Delighted, I could not contain myself without asking Kota Lalaji, if they were reading Tankari with ease. He said that they use it all the time. They conduct business transactions as far as Jodhpur written in Tankari. Well, it confirmed that Tankari was the language of business people, then in 1967 and a lot longer before that.

Now computers and terminals have gained control. I see most businesses on The Mall, in Shimla have either a Laptop or a computer terminal. Even the receipt of the restaurant at the Mall comes printed by the Computer/Terminal. When I visited the Gunj Bazaar in Shimla, I was told that no one had computers or laptops at their locations in Gunj. All wholesale business is conducted as before and entries are made in the daily red color register. They transcribe these entries at home to a computer. That has made accounting and balancing of the books easy.  Well done, mixing old with the new.

I never learnt Tankari myself. Britain had left India in 1947 and the schools were open to everyone. I joined one of them. The mode of education was Hindi, but English was taught side by side. By the time I finished elementary school, the test included English, reading and writing comprehension. By the matriculation time English, Hindi, Punjabi comprehension was essential to finish high school. The college was all English language instructions.

Now an effort is afoot to give Tankari a bit of an official status before it is totally forgotten.

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