Phase One
I met Mr. Amit Kharsani to ask him abut his work as a calligrapher and his views on my project. First and foremost, I told him that I was studying gujarati from the navneet book, where I had some problems regarding the construction of some key alphabets. When I pointed out, he told me that not only those, but many of the alphabets in the book had been designed improperly. He then wrote the alphabets himself, to demonstrate the actually construction of the alphabets.
I also had some discussion about the gujarati language and the script. He told me that the till a certain age, Gujarati never had a script, It was just a spoken language. People then used to write Gujarati in Devanagari using a kitta (Cut reed pen). As time progressed, Gujarati people felt the need of having their own script, thus Gujarati evolved. At first, the written Gujarati had a Shirorekha, but it soon got omitted from the script. A standard Gujarati type proportions are 6 pen strokes laid vertical, just like in Devanagari.
Mr. Kharsani also told that there had also been a running script in Gujarati called as Mahajani, which was derived from the Modi lipi of ancient Maharashtra used during Shivaji's times. This script was
extensively used to write entires in account books. This script is rarely practied today.
Mr. Kharsani asked me to meet him the next day, as he would bring some of his work and books to show me, so i could get more insights on my project. He asked me to look up a book called "Bhadram Bhadra" written by Kumar Shankar Joshi, which would help me in forming a sentence like "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
Some Hand painters like Chandubhai Rana alias Painter Kaladhar at Raipur were also suggested by him who had a deep understanding of Gujarati and had been in this field for decades.
I met Mr. Amit Kharsani to ask him abut his work as a calligrapher and his views on my project. First and foremost, I told him that I was studying gujarati from the navneet book, where I had some problems regarding the construction of some key alphabets. When I pointed out, he told me that not only those, but many of the alphabets in the book had been designed improperly. He then wrote the alphabets himself, to demonstrate the actually construction of the alphabets.
I also had some discussion about the gujarati language and the script. He told me that the till a certain age, Gujarati never had a script, It was just a spoken language. People then used to write Gujarati in Devanagari using a kitta (Cut reed pen). As time progressed, Gujarati people felt the need of having their own script, thus Gujarati evolved. At first, the written Gujarati had a Shirorekha, but it soon got omitted from the script. A standard Gujarati type proportions are 6 pen strokes laid vertical, just like in Devanagari.
Mr. Kharsani also told that there had also been a running script in Gujarati called as Mahajani, which was derived from the Modi lipi of ancient Maharashtra used during Shivaji's times. This script was
extensively used to write entires in account books. This script is rarely practied today.
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| Mahajani as demonstrated by Mr. Kharsani |
Mr. Kharsani asked me to meet him the next day, as he would bring some of his work and books to show me, so i could get more insights on my project. He asked me to look up a book called "Bhadram Bhadra" written by Kumar Shankar Joshi, which would help me in forming a sentence like "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
Some Hand painters like Chandubhai Rana alias Painter Kaladhar at Raipur were also suggested by him who had a deep understanding of Gujarati and had been in this field for decades.
