My work on the Landa-based scripts of Sindhi continues. However, there
has been a change
to the name of the ‘Sindhi’ script that I proposed, and which I
briefly discussed in a
post in August 2010. The script is now called “Khudawadi”. An
image of it is given below:
The Khudawadi script was initially proposed under named ‘Sindhi’
because its character repertoire is based upon the ‘Standard Sindhi’
script. Standard Sindhi is itself based upon the Khudawadi script,
which was the most well-known and complete of the Landa-based scripts
used in Sindh. The intent of the original
proposal was to
develop a standard that might also be used for representing the minor
Landa scripts of Sindh, some of which are unsuitable for independent
encoding. As ‘Standard Sindhi’ was developed from Khudawadi in the
1860s with the same idea, the rationale is valid, but the choice of
the name ‘Sindhi’ is not.
The generic name ‘Sindhi’ is problematic for several reasons. It is
generally used for referring to the class of Landa-based scripts of
Sindh, ie. the ‘Sindhi scripts’. It is not the proper name of any
writing system that belongs to this script family. In fact, several
other scripts, such as Khojki and Shikarpuri, are also known as
‘Sindhi’. Even ‘Standard Sindhi’ was not known by the generic name
‘Sindhi’, but as ‘Hindi Sindhi’, etc. In modern India and Pakistan,
the ‘Sindhi script’ is commonly understood to be the Arabic-based
script used for writing the Sindhi language.
The name ‘Khudawadi’ is the most appropriate name for the script. It
is the proper name of the script and is well attested in primary and
secondary literature, such as the Linguistic Survey of India. The
name is also used for ‘Standard Sindhi’, which is a reformed variant
of Khudawadi and is referred to as such, ie. ‘improved Khudawadi’, in
various sources.
The change of name from ‘Sindhi’ to ‘Khudawadi’ will provide greater
semantic and taxonomic clarity in identifying the various scripts used
for writing Sindhi and the scripts used in Sindh. For example, it is
more appropriate to refer to “the Sindhi scripts ‘Khudawadi’ and
‘Khojki’”, rather than to “the Sindhi scripts ‘Sindhi’ and ‘Khojki’”.
Moreover, the use of the name ‘Khudawadi’ will enable users to
distinguish between the Landa-based and Arabic-based scripts.
More details are available in the
document requesting
the formal change of name. The final proposal for Khudawadi is almost
ready for submission to the Unicode Technical Committee.