Alphabet Letters
Ranjana Ma
Ranjana Letters
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Origin In use from about the eleventh century CE, in the Kathmandu Valley among the Newar people of Nepal
Ma is the twenty-fifth consonant of the Ranjana varnamala and the nasal that closes the labial class, and with it the five vargas are complete. What follows is a different kind of material: four semivowels, three sibilants and h, which the Indian analysis groups apart from the stops. Ma is also the closing sound of om and the opening of mani, so it is one of the letters most often written in Ranjana on prayer wheels, temple walls and manuscript covers. No Unicode code point exists for any Ranjana letter, so the shape here is a vector outline lifted from an openly licensed Ranjana typeface; nothing in this entry is a Devanagari or Newa substitute.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodIn use from about the eleventh century CE, in the Kathmandu Valley among the Newar people of Nepal 2 Place of OriginThe Kathmandu Valley, among the Newar people of Nepal, in use from about the eleventh century CE 2Tradition: Newar manuscript culture Origin of the NameNamed by its own sound. Ranjana letter names are the sound itself, unlike the Greek and Semitic names, which are borrowed words. 2 Sense of the NameThe nasal that closes the labial class and, with it, the five vargas; the closing sound of om and the opening of mani. 2 Identity
Script TypeConsonant sign of a Brahmi-derived abugida; it carries the inherent short a unless a dependent vowel sign is written 1Tradition: Brahmic writing PositionTwenty-fifth of the thirty-three consonants, closing the five vargas 2Tradition: The Ranjana varnamala Attributions
Associated SoundLabial nasal; the closing sound of om and the opening of mani 2Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural RoleThe closing sound of om and the opening of mani, so it is among the letters most often written in Ranjana on prayer wheels, temple walls and manuscript covers 3Tradition: Newar Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceRanjana has no Unicode allocation; the Newa block U+11400 to U+1147F encodes Prachalit or Newar, a different script used for the same two languages 4Tradition: Digital text encoding Learn More
Ma: The Ranjana Letter
Ma is the fifth and last cell of the labial row, the nasal made with the lips, and it closes the grid of twenty five stops. It is common in Sanskrit in every position, and it is the last letter of the six syllable mantra most often written in Ranjana on prayer wheels and carved stones, so it is among the shapes an outsider is most likely to have seen without knowing what it was. Its place at the end of the fifth class completes a structure that has been building since the first row: five points of articulation, four kinds of stop at each, and a nasal to close each class. What follows in the chart is not part of the grid.
The four semivowels, three sibilants and the aspirate are listed after it because they are not stops and cannot be placed in its columns. In Ranjana Ma is written as any consonant, with the inherent short a, hanging from the head stroke and taking its vowel marks in the four available positions. Ma is also one of the letters most often seen in the compressed monogram writing the script is used for, since a mantra written as a single interlocked figure has to end somewhere and this letter frequently does the ending. What is public in that use is the writing; the practice attached to the syllables belongs to living traditions and is not described here.
Ma and the End of the Five Classes
Reaching the end of the fifth class is the natural pause in a recitation of the varnamala, and it is the point at which the chart's central claim has been fully set out. Twenty five letters have been produced from two dimensions and five stations in the mouth, arranged so that any of them can be located by counting rather than by memory. Nothing that follows in the chart is organised so tightly, because nothing that follows fits the scheme: a semivowel is not a stop, a sibilant is not a stop, and the aspirate at the end of the order is a class of one. The tradition acknowledges that by listing them separately rather than forcing them into cells.
For Ranjana this structure is what makes a letter by letter comparison with its relatives possible, and it is the basis on which the correspondences recorded in this atlas are stated: a Ranjana consonant and a Devanagari consonant occupy the same cell of the same inherited grid, and both continue the sign that Brahmi wrote in that cell, through the northern line of descent that runs from Brahmi through the Gupta and Siddhamatrka stages to the scripts of Nepal. The pause also marks a change in how much can be said with confidence. The grid is regular and its correspondences are secure; the letters after it are a more mixed group whose treatment varies more between scripts, so a reader should expect the remaining entries to carry more qualification than the twenty five just covered.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
Ranjana Ma continues the sign Brahmi Ma 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.
Related To
Ranjana Ma and Devanagari Ma 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.
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