Gujarati

01Rasas of the Jain munis

Hemachandra’s grammar, written at Patan under the Chaulukya king Siddharaja Jayasimha in the 12th century, quotes Apabhramsha verses that are already close to Gujarati. In 1185 the Jain monk Shalibhadra Suri composed the Bharateshvara Bahubali Rasa, on the contest of the two sons of Rishabhadeva, the earliest known work in Old Gujarati. Jain munis kept writing rasas and phagus, and Jain bhandars at Patan and Khambhat preserved them.

02Narsinh Mehta and Premanand

Narsinh Mehta of Junagadh, in the 15th century, is the adi kavi of Gujarati. His prabhatiyas are sung at dawn, and his bhajan Vaishnav Jan To, describing the true devotee as one who feels another’s pain, was Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite and is sung across India. In the 17th century Premanand told the Puranic kathas as akhyanas, performed with a copper pot as accompaniment. Gandhiji wrote his autobiography and his paper Navajivan in Gujarati.

03The script and today

Gujarati script is Nagari without the headline, a form long used by merchants for accounts. The earliest known document in it dates from 1592, and it first appeared in print in 1797. Narmad compiled the first Gujarati dictionary, Narmakosh, in the 1870s. Gujarati is the official language of Gujarat, and the 2011 Census counted 5,54,92,554 speakers, with large communities in East Africa, Britain and North America.

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