Punkah
type of fan
A punkah, also pankha (Urdu: پَنکھا, Hindi: पंखा, paṅkhā), is a type of fan used since the early 6th century BC. The word pankha originated from pankh, the wings of a bird which produce a current of air when flapped.
History
In its original sense in the Indian subcontinent, pankha (a Hindi word) typically describes a handheld fan made from a single frond of palm or a woven square of bamboo strips, rattan or other plant fibre, that can be rotated or fanned. These small handheld devices are still used by millions when ceiling fans stop working during frequent power outages.
In the colonial age, the word came to be used in British India and elsewhere in the tropical and subtropical world for a large swinging fan, fixed to the ceiling, pulled by a punkah wallah during hot weather. To cover a larger area, such as the inside of an office or a courthouse, a number of punkahs could be connected together by strings so that they would swing in unison. The material used could range from utilitarian rattan to expensive fabrics. The date of this invention is not known, but it was familiar to the Arabs as early as the 8th century.
The electric ceiling fan largely supplanted it in barracks and other large buildings at the beginning of the 20th century.
Legacy
The term punkah louvre refers to the directional outlet for cool air in aircraft, particularly those over the passenger seats.
In India, the punkhawallah or pankha wallah was the servant who operated the fan, often using a pulley system.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Punkah” is type of fan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Punkah and type, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “type of fan” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q178974. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Punkah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.