Guru Angad in the context of "Guru Amar Das"

Gurmukhī (Punjabi: ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ [ˈɡʊɾᵊmʊkʰiː], Shahmukhi: گُرمُکھی) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). Commonly regarded as a Sikh script, Gurmukhi is used in Punjab, India as the official script of the Punjabi language.

The primary scripture of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, is written in Gurmukhī, in various dialects and languages often subsumed under the generic title Sant Bhasha or "saint language", in addition to other languages like Persian and various phases of Indo-Aryan languages.

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, but also in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Khatris claim they are warriors who took to trade. In the Indian subcontinent, they were mostly engaged in mercantile professions such as banking and trade. They were the dominant commercial and financial administration class of late-medieval India. Some in Punjab often belonged to hereditary agriculturalist land-holding lineages, while others were engaged in artisanal occupations such as silk production and weaving.

The Khatris of Punjab, specifically, were scribes and traders during the medieval period, with the Gurumukhi 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 upper-caste literate elite such as the Khatris, Kashmiri Brahmins and Kayasthas took readily to learning Persian from the times of Sikandar Lodi onwards and found ready employment in the Imperial Services, specifically in the departments of accountancy (siyaq), draftsmanship (insha) and offices of the revenue minister (diwan).