Khatri

Rare card · No. 71703

Khatri (IPA: [kʰət̪ɾiː]) is a caste originating from the Malwa and Majha areas of Punjab region of South Asia that is predominantly found in India, and in small numbers in Pakistan. In the Indian subcontinent, they were mostly engaged in mercantile professions such as banking and trade. In late-medieval India they were the dominant commercial and financial class, while in Punjab some were hereditary landholding agriculturalists and others worked as artisans, such as silk weavers. The Khatris of Punjab, specifically, were scribes and traders during the medieval period, with the Gurmukhi script used in writing the Punjabi language deriving from a standardised form of the Lāṇḍa script used by Khatri traders; the invention of the script is traditionally ascribed to Guru Angad. During the medieval period, with the rise of Persian as an elite vernacular due to Islamic rule, some of the traditional high status General caste literate elite such as the Khatris, Kashmiri Brahmins and Kayasthas took...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Col. James Skinner, aka Sikandar (1778-1841), Public domain