Alphabet Letters
Devanagari Ii ई
Devanagari Letters
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Origin Devanagari forms settle between roughly the seventh and the tenth centuries CE, descending from Brahmi through the Gupta and Nagari hands
Ii is the long palatal vowel, the fourth letter of the varnamala and the partner of short i. Its matra is the mirror of its short partner's, a hook leaning to the right of the consonant rather than the left, and the two are among the first pairs a learner is taught to distinguish because reversing them changes the word. Long ii carries heavy grammatical load in Sanskrit: it forms a large class of feminine stems, so that a great many goddess names and abstract nouns end in it, and it appears in verb endings and in the long vowels produced when two vowels meet at a word join. The independent letter is written only where a word opens with the vowel.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodDevanagari forms settle between roughly the seventh and the tenth centuries CE, descending from Brahmi through the Gupta and Nagari hands 3Tradition: Indian epigraphy Place of OriginNorthern India 3Tradition: Indian epigraphy Origin of the NameNamed by its own sound. Devanagari letter names are the sound itself, unlike the Greek and Semitic names, which are borrowed words. 1 Sense of the NameThe long partner of i; forms a large class of Sanskrit feminine stems and carries heavy grammatical weight. 2 Identity
Script TypeIndependent vowel letter of a Brahmi-derived abugida, written where a word begins with the vowel; a dependent sign is used where it follows a consonant 1 PositionFourth letter of the varnamala, the long partner of short i 1Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Attributions
Associated SoundLong i, palatal, held for two morae; its vowel sign mirrors the short sign and is written to the right of the consonant 2Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural RoleForms a major class of feminine stems, so a large share of the tradition's goddess names and abstract qualities end in this vowel 2Tradition: Sanskrit grammar A fact about the language rather than about the letter, recorded because it explains the vowel's frequency in devotional text. Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceCounted among the matrika, the fifty little mothers of the letter-garland; the count belongs to the series, not to this letter alone 4Tradition: Hindu Tantra, the garland of letters A property of the fifty-letter series. Individual schools assign further correspondences that differ between traditions and are not adopted here. Learn More
Ii: The Long Palatal Vowel
Long ii is the fourth letter of the varnamala and the partner of short i in the pattern of short and long that governs the opening of the series. Its articulation is the same, the tongue raised towards the hard palate, and it differs only in duration, held for two morae where the short vowel is held for one. Its vowel sign mirrors its partner's: where short i hooks over the consonant and drops to the left, long ii hooks over and drops to the right, and the pair is one of the first distinctions a learner has to fix, because the two signs are similar enough to confuse in handwriting and the difference they carry is not small.
The independent letter is used only where a word opens with the vowel. Long ii carries a large grammatical load. It forms a major class of feminine stems, which is why so many of the tradition's names for goddesses and for abstract qualities end in it, and it appears in the endings of several noun and verb classes. It also arises through sandhi wherever two i sounds meet at a word join, so a written or recited text shows it in places where the separated words had short vowels. Behind the Devanagari shape stands a Brahmi original, and the intervening forms are documented in the inscriptional record that Richard Salomon's guide to Indian epigraphy surveys.
Ii in the Names of the Tradition
The grammatical fact that long ii forms feminine stems has a consequence that runs through the whole religious vocabulary of Sanskrit: an enormous proportion of the names by which goddesses are addressed end in this vowel, as do the abstract nouns for qualities and powers treated as feminine. That is a fact about the language rather than about the letter, but it is the reason the sign appears so often in liturgical and devotional text, and it is worth stating plainly because the coincidence of a grammatical ending with a devotional register is easy to mistake for a property of the sound itself. In recitation, the length of ii is held and trained, since the classical metres are quantitative and a long vowel makes its syllable heavy.
The Vedic schools developed methods of recitation that repeat and permute the words of a text precisely so that vowel lengths and accents cannot drift across generations of oral transmission, and vowel length is one of the features those methods were designed to protect. In the Tantric reading of the alphabet, long ii belongs with the other vowels to the class the traditions treat as prior to the consonants, and the fifty-letter garland of which it is a member is understood as a whole rather than as a set of independent signs. Individual correspondences differ between schools, and this atlas records the letter's place in the series without adopting any one school's further attributions.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
Devanagari Ii 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.
Related To
Devanagari Ii answers to the Gurmukhi bearer Iri, whose own description states the front vowels, i, the long ee and e, are assigned to it.
Ranjana Ii and Devanagari Ii hold the same position in the inherited varnamala and write the same sound, as separate northern Brahmi descendants rather than as variants of one script. Devanagari is the relative most readers know, so the two charts can be read against each other.
The same letter of the same order in Devanagari. The two scripts are separate descendants of the same late Brahmi stock rather than one being taken from the other, which is why the sound value and the position agree while the shapes do not.
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