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In ࡏ

Mandaic Letters

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Origin The script took shape between the second and the seventh century CE

In is the sixteenth letter of the Mandaic alphabet and stands where Aramaic, Hebrew and Syriac have ayin. In Mandaic it is read as the vowel e as well as carrying the old pharyngeal value, another instance of the weakening of the Semitic gutturals that runs through the language. It joins on both sides, and its name is one of the few built on i rather than a. A separate and much later sign, ain, borrowed from the Arabic letter of that name, sits at the very end of the alphabet and should not be confused with this one, which is the inherited sixteenth letter.

Facts
Disputed
A Rival System's Attribution
The script's ancestry is assigned either to a cursive form of Aramaic, the derivation favored by most script historians, or to the Parthian chancery script used in Sasanian era administrative documents. 4Tradition: The Mandaic script
Both derivations are held in the literature and neither has displaced the other. The Aramaic cursive camp points to the letterforms' overall resemblance to other late Aramaic cursive scripts of the region, including Nabataean and Syriac; the Parthian chancery camp points to specific letterforms, including certain medial and final forms, that resemble Pahlavi documentary hands more closely than any Aramaic cursive exemplar. No single find has settled the question, and Mandaic paleography treats it as open pending further comparative work.
Open Questions
Sense of the Name
Not established for this letter's own name
In's own description states its name is "one of the few built on i rather than a" and names no sense for it.
Attributions
Associated Sound
The vowel e, standing where Aramaic has the pharyngeal ayin 1Tradition: The Mandaic script
Origins
Origin Period
The script took shape between the second and the seventh century CE 1Tradition: The Mandaic script
Place of Origin
Lower Mesopotamia, among the Mandaean communities of southern Iraq and south-western Iran 3Tradition: The Mandaic script
Origin of the Name
Most letter names are formed from the letter's own sound with a preceding a, and do not continue the Northwest Semitic nouns that stand behind the Hebrew and Syriac names 1Tradition: The Mandaic script
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The alphabet is called the abagada after its opening letters, and the traditional count of twenty-four is reached by adding the digraph adu and then writing the first letter again at the end 2Tradition: The Mandaic alphabet
Identity
Script Type
A true alphabet rather than an abjad: halqa, ushenna and aksa are full letters for the vowels a, u and i, where the related Semitic scripts write consonants and point the vowels 1Tradition: The Mandaic script
Position
Sixteenth of the twenty-two inherited letters 2Tradition: The Mandaic script
How the Letter Joins
Joins on both sides, taking initial, medial, final and isolated shapes 1Tradition: The Mandaic script
Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural Role
Classical Mandaic, written in this script, is the liturgical language of the Mandaean religion; the community is small and now largely in diaspora, and its priestly knowledge is not open material 3Tradition: Mandaeism
Transmission
Manuscript Tradition
Mandaean texts are transmitted in manuscripts copied by priestly scribes, whose colophons record the chain of copyists standing behind each copy 3Tradition: Mandaean scribal transmission
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In: The Mandaic Letter

In is the sixteenth letter of the Mandaic alphabet and stands where Aramaic, Hebrew and Syriac have ayin. It joins on both sides.

In Mandaic it is read as the vowel e as well as carrying the old pharyngeal value, another instance of the weakening of the Semitic gutturals that runs through the language. That double duty makes it one of the letters where the difference between the classical description and the living reading is widest.

Its name is one of the few built on i rather than on a, which puts it in the small group of irregular names alongside ushenna, aksa, it, dushenna and kad. Those six are the letters doing unusual jobs in the alphabet: the vowels, the old gutturals and the two ligatures.

A separate and much later sign, ain, borrowed from the Arabic letter of that name, sits at the very end of the alphabet and should not be confused with this one. In is the inherited sixteenth letter with an unbroken place in the sequence; ain has no inherited place at all and was taken in to write Arabic words. The two are recorded in this atlas as distinct, with a relation between them saying so, because the names are close enough to be run together in a list.

Because in joins on both sides it takes a full set of four shapes and never forces a break, where ain, the late borrowing at the end of the range, joins only to the right. That difference in behaviour on the page is one more thing separating the two signs beyond the closeness of their names.

In, Ain and Two Signs a Reader Runs Together

A list of Mandaic letter names contains both in and ain, and nothing in the names themselves says that one is an inherited letter and the other a late borrowing. The distinction is worth setting out plainly, because a reader meeting the two in a table will reasonably assume they are variants of one another.

In is the sixteenth letter. It stands where Aramaic, Hebrew and Syriac have ayin, it descends from that letter, and it has been in the alphabet for as long as the alphabet has existed. In Mandaic it also carries the vowel e.

Ain is the last sign in the Mandaic range of the modern character standard. It is a borrowing from the Arabic letter of that name, taken in for the sounds of Arabic words, and it is not one of the traditional twenty-four. Its presence records what centuries of contact did to a small liturgical language surrounded by Arabic.

So the two signs share an ancestor at several removes, since Arabic ayn also descends from the Aramaic letter, and they arrived in Mandaic by completely different routes and at completely different times. One was inherited with the alphabet and one was borrowed back from a neighbour many centuries later.

The atlas records the pair with a relation marked as a conflation rather than an equivalence, which is the honest shape of the fact.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Commonly Conflated with (See Note)

Ain ࡘ, Alphabet Letters

Ain, the last sign in the Mandaic range of the character standard, is a late borrowing from Arabic. In is the alphabet's own sixteenth letter, the inherited descendant of Aramaic ayin, and is read as the vowel e as well as carrying the old pharyngeal value. Close names, different histories.

Source The Unicode StandardThe Unicode Consortium

Related To

Ayin ע, Alphabet Letters

Mandaic In and Hebrew Ayin occupy the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence. Hebrew keeps the inherited noun as the letter name and the numeral value 70; Mandaic keeps neither. Where the Mandaic shapes came from is disputed, a cursive Aramaic hand or the Parthian chancery script.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
E ܥ, Alphabet Letters

Mandaic In and Syriac E hold the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence both alphabets inherited. The shapes are unrelated to look at, so it is the order that carries the descent. Where the Mandaic shapes came from is disputed, a cursive Aramaic hand or the Parthian chancery script.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Sources
1. The Unicode Standard
The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode ConsortiumView the Source
2. The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996View the Source
3. The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People
Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Oxford University Press, 2002View the Source
4. Iranian Scripts for Aramaic Languages: The Origin of the Mandaic Script
Charles G. Haberl, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 341, pp. 53 to 62, 2006View the Source
Open Questions (1 open question)
Do Mandaic's irregularly named letters (halqa, ushenna, it, aksa, in, ash) carry an inherited sense, or are they labels of a different kind?

Most Mandaic letters are named by their own sound with a preceding a (ab, ag, ad...), and their own descriptions state plainly this is a pronunciation label rather than an inherited word with a sense, unlike the Northwest Semitic nouns Hebrew and Syriac kept for the same slots. Six letters break that regular pattern by their own descriptions' own account (Its own text names the set: ushenna, aksa, dushenna, kad and it itself; In and Ash are separately marked as built on a different vowel or sound), and Dushenna and Kad, two of the six, already carry attested senses because they are documented ligatures of a real Aramaic word. The other four, plus Halqa, the very first letter and one of the script's three true vowel signs, whose name is equally outside the regular pattern, have no sense offered by any source consulted, and none of their descriptions states this as a settled absence either.

What would resolve this A study of Mandaic's own manuscript and liturgical tradition for these specific six names, checked against Mandaic vocabulary and against the older Aramaic sequence's inherited nouns for the same six slots (Aleph, Waw, Heth, Yod, Ayin, Shin), beyond what the general reference literature already surveys.
Mandaic studies; comparative Aramaic philologyThe Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard
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