________________
368
THE ALPHABET
nagari characters is that, in the former, the horizontal and perpendicular strokes are omitted where possible, so that, with a few exceptions, the single signs can neatly be written with one stroke.
བཿསྐུལ རྫ་་འ— (q»་- ། ༥༤- ༠+La
recta- mno-a14gged 52
93 जने मे हुड् पेटवा दिन मां से छोएका घटना आपने पाप से करिस फिरेपाय हमको जान નાવે
Fig. 166-Specimens of Kaithi scripts
1, Eastern Purnea, 2, Awadhi variant (Eastern Hindi) from Gonda District
Besides, the Kaithi is not as complete as the Deva-nagari. It generally uses the long i and u for both the long and the short forms of i and u, and it makes no distinction between s and sh, using the latter form for both s and sh. It is unusual for semi-literate people to separate single words (it was generally the case in earlier times), but only to mark full periods by stops in handwriting, contrary to the practice for print and formal use. When written on ruled paper, the signs are put below the lines, and not on them as in European scripts.
As mentioned, Kaithi differs locally. In the two extreme countries, Gujarat, to the east, and Bihar, to the west, it has attained the position of a national script, but nowadays the two scripts, Bihari and Gujarati (if this is at all connected with the Kaithi) are essentially different.
Gujarati Script
Gujarati, a member of the "Inner sub-branch" of the Indo-Aryan languages, is spoken by some eleven million people in the province of Gujarat, in the state of Baroda and other neighbouring states.
Three varieties of writing are used for Gujarati: (1) the Deva-nagari, which until quite recently was employed exclusively for books, and nowadays is rarely used except by the Nagara Brahmans who claim to have given the script its name and some other tribes; (2) the Gujarati character, which is nowadays the official script, employed for printing and for general purposes; and (3) the Vaniai (from vanio, "shopkeeper")
