Sharadalok: first Kashmiri magazine in the old Sharada script released

'Sharadalok', described by its publishers as the first magazine in the Kashmiri language to be written in the old Sharada script, has been released at the Saptasindhu campus of the Central University of Himachal Pradesh in Dehra. The magazine is published by the Saptasindhu Foundation, and its release was reported on Wednesday, 14 October 2026. Vice-Chancellor Prof. Sat Prakash Bansal and Prof. Kuldeep Chand Agnihotri, director of the foundation, attended the launch. Dr Jaiprakash Singh is the magazine's editor, with Sanjay Pandita as co-editor and Aditya Awasthi as executive editor. The publishers say the aim is to encourage people to write Kashmiri in Sharada again.

Sharada is one of the oldest scripts of north-western India. It grew out of the western branch of the Brahmi script around the ninth century and was once widely used in Kashmir and nearby regions. A large part of Kashmir's written heritage, in Sanskrit and in Kashmiri, survives in Sharada manuscripts, and for centuries it was the everyday script of the valley's scholars. Later scripts of the region, such as Takri, used in the hill states of what is now Himachal Pradesh, developed from it.

When Kashmiri moved to the Perso-Arabic Nastaliq script, Sharada slowly slipped out of daily life. Today very few people can read it, which means many old texts can be studied only by a small group of specialists. A script that is not used for anything new tends to survive only in archives. A magazine changes that by giving readers a reason to learn the letters and a regular supply of new writing in them.

The university that hosted the launch has worked on this for some time. The Central University of Himachal Pradesh runs programmes in Kashmiri and Dogri, and in earlier years it offered certificate courses in reading Sharada. The new magazine comes from the same campus, linking academic work on the script to a publication that ordinary readers can pick up.

The effort also fits a wider push to digitise and study India's manuscripts. A living readership for Sharada would make it easier to train the people who catalogue, read and translate the many manuscripts written in it.

Short-term: Readers, students and Kashmiri Pandit families who still use Sharada for religious purposes get regular new writing in the script, and the magazine gives teachers ready reading material.

Long-term: If the magazine finds readers and writers, it could help build a new generation that can read Sharada, which matters for the study of old Kashmiri and Sanskrit manuscripts written in it.

Who is affected: Kashmiri speakers, especially in the Kashmiri Pandit community; students and scholars of Kashmir's history, Sanskrit and manuscripts; and institutions working on script and manuscript preservation.

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