Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Ja 𑀚
Brahmi Letters
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Origin Mature Brahmi is securely attested in the edicts of Ashoka in the middle of the third century BCE, and the script could be read again only after James Prinsep worked out its values in 1837
Ja is the voiced unaspirated palatal, the third member of the second class, made at the same place as ca with the vocal folds vibrating. The letter is frequent in both Sanskrit and Prakrit. Among the scripts descended from Brahmi it later took a modifying dot in several of them, to write the sounds that arrived with Persian and Arabic vocabulary, a use no Brahmi inscription has and one that lies many centuries beyond the script itself. In Brahmi the sign is read with the inherent short a and joins a following consonant by ligature when no vowel comes between them. In the Prakrit of the edicts it is frequent, since several older sound groups fell together into a palatal as the language moved away from its Old Indo-Aryan form.
Facts
Disputed
Origin PeriodMany epigraphists derive Brahmi from a Semitic prototype, most often Aramaic, adapted in the centuries before the Mauryan empire 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Brahmi's ancestry is disputed among epigraphists. Richard Salomon's Indian Epigraphy (Oxford University Press, 1998) surveys two live positions on the origin of the script attested in the Ashokan inscriptions: one derives Brahmi from a Semitic prototype, most often Aramaic, adapted in the centuries before the Mauryan empire; the other holds that it developed inside India itself. The dispute turns on the corpus, since Brahmi is securely attested only from Ashoka's edicts in the middle of the third century BCE onward, first read again by James Prinsep in 1837, and no earlier specimen on either side is securely dated. Both camps compare Brahmi's letterforms against Aramaic and other Semitic scripts using the same paleographic method, and without an intermediate dated example bridging the gap between any proposed ancestor and the Mauryan era script, neither derivation has been shown to fit the evidence better than the other. Origin PeriodOthers argue for a development inside India, and with no securely dated specimen earlier than the edicts the question stays open 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Brahmi's ancestry is disputed among epigraphists. Richard Salomon's Indian Epigraphy (Oxford University Press, 1998) surveys two live positions on the origin of the script attested in the Ashokan inscriptions: one derives Brahmi from a Semitic prototype, most often Aramaic, adapted in the centuries before the Mauryan empire; the other holds that it developed inside India itself. The dispute turns on the corpus, since Brahmi is securely attested only from Ashoka's edicts in the middle of the third century BCE onward, first read again by James Prinsep in 1837, and no earlier specimen on either side is securely dated. Both camps compare Brahmi's letterforms against Aramaic and other Semitic scripts using the same paleographic method, and without an intermediate dated example bridging the gap between any proposed ancestor and the Mauryan era script, neither derivation has been shown to fit the evidence better than the other. Attributions
Associated SoundVoiced unaspirated palatal, made at the same place as ca with the vocal folds vibrating 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Origins
Origin PeriodMature Brahmi is securely attested in the edicts of Ashoka in the middle of the third century BCE, and the script could be read again only after James Prinsep worked out its values in 1837 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Place of OriginThe Indian subcontinent. The Ashokan edicts carry the script from the Gangetic plain across the Deccan to the far south, while the northwest of the same empire wrote in Kharosthi instead 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Origin of the NameThe letter has no traditional name of its own. It is called by its own sound plus the inherent short a, and the form used here is the name the Unicode Standard gives the character 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters Sense of the Namethe voiced unaspirated palatal; eighth consonant of the Brahmi order 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters Identity
Script TypeAn abugida: every consonant sign carries an inherent short a, which a vowel mark alters and the virama cancels, so the unit written is the syllable rather than the single sound 1Tradition: Comparative writing systems PositionEighth consonant of the Brahmi order and third member of the palatal class 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy How the Letter JoinsConsonants that meet with no vowel between them are written as a conjunct, the second stacked beneath or ligatured to the first, rather than as two separate signs 1Tradition: Comparative writing systems Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe letter belongs to the received Brahmi order, and the corresponding sign in the scripts descended from Brahmi across South and Southeast Asia goes back to it 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Transmission
Manuscript TraditionAttested from the Asokan rock and pillar edicts of the third century BCE, the earliest substantial Brahmi corpus. 2 Learn More
Ja and the Vocabulary of Birth
The Sanskrit root meaning to be born begins with this letter, and it is one of the most productive roots in the language. As the final member of a compound it forms adjectives meaning born of, produced from or arising in, so an enormous class of descriptive terms ends in this consonant: the lotus is the water-born, a large part of the vocabulary of caste and lineage is built on the same root, and so are the words for birth, kinship and the cycle of rebirth that runs through the religious literature of the subcontinent.
A second high-frequency root beginning with this letter is the one meaning to know, and it supplies the noun for knowledge that names one of the classical paths in Indian religious thought. That word is written with a conjunct of this letter and the palatal nasal, a cluster whose pronunciation drifted a long way from its spelling in the later languages and whose written form in several descendant scripts fused into a ligature that no longer shows either of its parts. In Brahmi the two components are still separately visible in the conjunct, which is one of the small ways in which the parent script is easier to read than its children.
For a reader of the earliest inscriptions the letter is common in a specific place: personal names. The donative records that make up most of the surviving early Brahmi name their donors, and a great many Indian personal names are compounds built on the roots this letter opens, so the sign recurs in exactly the part of the text that varies from inscription to inscription. That is useful, because a decipherer works from the constant part of a formula and tests the reading against the variable part, and names are the variable part.
The Dotted Letter, and Where the Order Stops
Several of the scripts descended from Brahmi later added a subscript dot to this letter to write a sound the inherited inventory had no place for, the voiced sibilant that arrived in the northern languages with Persian and Arabic vocabulary. It is a neat solution and it says something about how these alphabets grow. A new sound does not get a new position in the order, because the order is fixed and recited; it gets a modified form of an existing letter, filed under the letter it modifies. The dotted signs are therefore additions that leave the sequence undisturbed, and a reciter of the alphabet does not have to learn a longer list.
Brahmi itself has no such marks. The inscriptions record what the languages of the third century BCE and the following centuries actually needed, and everything beyond that is a later script's business. The distinction is worth holding onto, because a reader who knows a modern Indic alphabet will recognise most of the Brahmi letters and may reasonably assume the modern refinements go back with them. They do not. The dotted letters, the explicit vowel canceller and several of the conventions for writing clusters are all developments of the descendants, and Brahmi left more to the reader than any of them.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Ja descends from the Brahmi sign of the same value, through the Gupta and Nagari hands of northern India. The two alphabets align letter for letter because both are laid out in the varnamala order, the arrangement the Sanskrit phoneticians fixed by place of articulation.
The Gurmukhi letter Jajja continues the sign Brahmi Ja writes in the same place of the inherited series. The descent is not direct: it runs through the Sharada script of the northwest and then the Landa hands of the Punjab, and it is stated from position in the order rather than from shape.
Ranjana Ja continues the sign Brahmi Ja writes in the same place of the inherited varnamala. The descent is not direct: it runs through the Gupta and Siddhamatrka stages of the northern Brahmi line and then the scripts of Nepal, and it is stated from position in the order rather than from shape.
Siddham continues the Brahmi order letter for letter. The descent runs through the late Brahmi of the Gupta period and the Siddhamatrka hand that grows out of it, so this is a lineage rather than a direct copy of the older shape.
Tibetan ja continues the Brahmi ja, keeping its value and its place in the inherited order. The descent of the Tibetan script from the Brahmi family is not disputed; which Indic script of that family served as the immediate model in the seventh century is, and this link names the ancestor the atlas holds rather than choosing among the candidates.
Related To
Voicing partners in the palatal class. Both are unaspirated stops made with the body of the tongue against the hard palate, and the vocal folds vibrate through the closure of the second.
Opposite corners of the palatal class, the second of the five groups of five. Between them the two carry one feature each from the pair the table is built on.
Aspiration partners in the palatal class. Both are voiced, and the second is released with the breathy voice that Sanskrit kept where most of its relatives lost it.
The nasal of the palatal class. Both are voiced and both are made with the body of the tongue against the hard palate, the nasal differing in that the closure is released through the nose.
Ja answers to Brahmi Ja, the same voiced palatal affricate.
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