Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Ra 𑀭
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
Ra is the consonantal counterpart of the syllabic r, and it is the second of the four semivowels. In the scripts descended from Brahmi it is the letter that develops the greatest number of special forms, written above the line before a cluster in some of them and beneath the consonant after it in others. In Brahmi itself it is a single upright sign, and the conjuncts it forms are among the shapes that changed most as the script moved into its regional descendants in the centuries after the Mauryan period. In the eastern Prakrit of several edicts an inherited r appears instead as l, so the letter is less frequent there than a reader coming from Sanskrit would expect.
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 SoundThe consonantal counterpart of the syllabic r, and the second of the four semivowels 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 r semivowel; twenty-seventh 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 PositionTwenty-seventh consonant of the Brahmi order and second of the four semivowels 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
The Letter With the Most Shapes
Of all the consonants, this is the one that develops the largest number of special forms in the scripts descended from Brahmi. Standing as the first member of a cluster it is written in several of them as a mark above the line, placed over the consonant that follows it and read before it; standing as the second member it appears as a stroke beneath. The two positions look nothing alike and neither looks much like the independent letter. A reader of a modern northern Indic script has to learn all three.
Brahmi itself is simpler. The letter is a single upright sign, and its clusters are formed rather than standardised, but the conjuncts it makes are among the shapes that changed most as the script passed into its regional descendants. That is the general pattern: simple letters are conservative and ligatures are not, so a script can look familiar in its alphabet and quite foreign in its clusters.
The consequence for palaeography is that conjuncts are treated as a separate body of evidence from the simple letters, dated on their own terms. A hand can be archaic in one and advanced in the other, and the divergence between the two is itself informative about how a script was learned and transmitted in a particular workshop or region.
Where the R Is an L
In the eastern Prakrit of several Ashokan edicts an inherited r appears instead as l, so a word that Sanskrit writes with this letter is cut with the lateral instead. The substitution is regular rather than occasional, it is confined to particular parts of the empire, and it is one of the standard criteria by which the dialects of the edicts are grouped. An edict cut at one site and the same edict cut at another can therefore differ in a way that has nothing to do with the scribe and everything to do with the language spoken locally.
That variation is the earliest direct evidence for dialect geography anywhere in South Asia, and it was generated by accident. A chancery sent one text out across an empire running from the northwest to the far south, and local scribes rendered it in the language of the place. Nothing comparable exists again for many centuries, which is why the Ashokan corpus is studied as intensively for its language as for its content.
For a reader the practical effect is that this letter is less frequent in the eastern material than a reader coming from Sanskrit would expect, and the lateral correspondingly more so. A transliteration that silently corrected the spellings would erase the boundary, which is why editions print what the stone shows.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Ra 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.
Ranjana Ra continues the sign Brahmi Ra 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.
The Gurmukhi letter Rara continues the sign Brahmi Ra 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.
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 ra continues the Brahmi ra, 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
The two liquids, which the phonetic tradition treats as a pair and which fall together in several of the dialects the Ashokan edicts were cut in.
The r of the inherited order, from which Tamil holds this letter apart in ordinary words. The distinction is Dravidian and has no counterpart in Sanskrit or Prakrit.
Both belong to the four semivowels, which the order arranges to match the sequence of the vowels they answer to.
The vowel this semivowel answers to. The syllabic r and the consonantal r are one sound in two roles, and the same substitution rule that turns i into ya turns the syllabic r into ra.
Both belong to the four the grammarians call antahstha, the sounds standing between the stops and the sibilants, which follow the classed consonants as a group in the Brahmi order.
Ra answers to Brahmi Ra, the same alveolar trill or tap.
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