Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Ya 𑀬
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
Ya is the palatal semivowel and the first of the four, the consonantal counterpart of the vowel i. The grammatical tradition treats the two as one sound in two roles: the vowel becomes the semivowel whenever a dissimilar vowel follows it, and the rules of sandhi that join words in Sanskrit are stated in exactly those terms. The four semivowels stand together after the five classes of stops, in the order ya, ra, la, va, which pairs them with the vowels i, syllabic r, syllabic l and u in the same sequence the vowel section uses. The pairing of vowel and semivowel is not a discovery of modern linguistics but the working basis of the sandhi rules, which describe in one operation what would otherwise be a long list of exceptions.
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. 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 palatal semivowel; twenty-sixth consonant of the Brahmi order 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters Transmission
Manuscript TraditionAttested from the Asokan rock and pillar edicts of the third century BCE, the earliest substantial Brahmi corpus. 2 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-sixth consonant of the Brahmi order and first 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 Attributions
Associated SoundPalatal semivowel, the consonantal counterpart of the vowel i; the vowel becomes this sound whenever a dissimilar vowel follows it 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy 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 Learn More
The Relative, and the Sentence Built From It
The Sanskrit relative pronoun begins with this letter, and it works as one half of a matched pair. A relative clause opens with a form of this stem and the main clause answers it with the corresponding form of the demonstrative stem beginning with the dental stop, so a Sanskrit sentence of any complexity is built as a correlation: which man, that man; where, there; when, then. The construction is the backbone of the language's syntax and it survives into the modern Indo-Aryan languages largely intact.
The same stem supplies the conjunctions for that, because, if and as, since a subordinate clause of almost any kind is introduced by one of its forms. Between the relative and the conjunctions the letter is among the most frequent word-initial consonants in the language, and it is one of the first a reader of inscriptions learns to recognise.
The letter is also the semivowel that the vowel i turns into whenever a dissimilar vowel follows it, which is one of the two or three most frequently applied rules in Sanskrit junction. So a reader meets it not only where a word genuinely begins with it but wherever a word ending in i has run into a following vowel and been rewritten. Undoing that is part of reading any continuous text in the script.
A Semivowel That Goes Underneath
The semivowels are the consonants most often found as the second member of a cluster, and this one especially so, because a great many Sanskrit suffixes and verbal formations put it directly after another consonant. In a script that writes a cluster by stacking the second element beneath the first, that means the letter spends much of its life in a reduced subscript form rather than in its full shape.
The descendant scripts developed those subscript forms in different directions, and the divergence is one of the standard groupings in Indian palaeography. Several of the northern alphabets reduced the subscript form of this letter to a stroke barely resembling the full letter; several southern ones kept a recognisable version; and the scripts of Southeast Asia generalised the principle, giving every consonant a regular subscript form used whenever it is the second member of a cluster.
Brahmi itself is less systematic than any of them. Its conjuncts are formed rather than standardised, the same cluster can be written more than one way in different periods and regions, and a reader has to recognise combined shapes case by case. That is one of the genuine difficulties of the script for a beginner, and it is a place where the parent is harder than most of its children rather than easier.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Ya 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 Ya continues the sign Brahmi Ya 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 ya continues the Brahmi ya, 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.
The Gurmukhi letter Yayya continues the sign Brahmi Ya 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.
Related To
The vowel this semivowel answers to. Sandhi treats the two as one sound in two roles: an i turns into ya whenever a dissimilar vowel follows it, and the rule is stated once rather than as a list of exceptions.
Both belong to the four semivowels, which stand together after the twenty-five classed stops and before the sibilants.
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.
The first and the last of the four semivowels, answering to the vowels i and u, which are the first and the last of the simple vowels that have semivowel counterparts.
Ya answers to Brahmi Ya, the same palatal approximant.
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