Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Ii 𑀈
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
Ii is the long palatal vowel, the same tongue position as short i held for two morae. The Brahmi order sets it immediately after its short partner, following the pattern that governs the whole vowel series. As an independent letter it is written only at the beginning of a word; elsewhere it is a mark attached to the consonant sign. The difference between the short and the long vowel carries real weight in the languages written in this script. It separates words that are otherwise identical and it fixes the weight of a syllable in verse, so the two marks are kept apart in the inscriptions even where the cutting is rapid and the letters are otherwise loosely formed.
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 SoundLong i, the same palatal tongue position as the short vowel held for two morae 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 the vowel it writes, 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 long i vowel; fourth letter 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 PositionFourth letter of the Brahmi order and the long partner of the third vowel 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy How the Letter JoinsAn independent vowel letter takes no attachment. After a consonant the same vowel is written not with this letter but as a mark added to the consonant sign 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
Long I in the Shape of Words
Long i is one of the busiest endings in Sanskrit. It forms feminine stems from a large class of masculines, so the sign appears at the end of an enormous number of words naming women, goddesses, rivers and abstractions of feminine gender, and it is the ending of a set of verbal and nominal derivatives besides. Because it sits at the end of the word it is normally written as a mark on the last consonant rather than as an independent letter, and the independent form is confined to the small number of words that open with the vowel.
Length here is not a shade of pronunciation but the difference between two words. A short i and a long i at the end of a stem can put a word in two different declensions with two different sets of endings, and a reader who misreads the mark misreads the grammar of the sentence. That is why the two marks are held apart in the inscriptions even where the cutting is rapid, and why editors of Brahmi texts note the distinction carefully in their transcriptions. In the Prakrit of the edicts the same distinction is alive, since Middle Indo-Aryan kept vowel quantity even as it simplified a good deal else, and the scribes of the Mauryan chancery had every reason to keep the two signs separate.
A Mark That Outlived Its Parent Script
The independent letter for long i is one of the signs of Brahmi whose descent can be followed across the whole family. It is present in the Gupta-period hands, in the Siddham of the Buddhist manuscript tradition, in the northern Nagari line and in the southern branch that produced the Grantha, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Sinhala alphabets, and in the scripts that reached Southeast Asia with Indian religion and Indian administration. Every one of them keeps a separate sign for it, and every one of them keeps it in fourth place in the recited order.
That continuity is what makes the order itself an object of study rather than a convenience. The sequence of letters was learned by heart and recited, and recitation is conservative in a way that writing is not: shapes drift with the hand and the writing surface, but a position in a memorised list does not. The result is that two scripts whose letters look nothing alike still agree on which letter comes fourth, and a scholar can line them up position by position with no need to reconstruct the shapes at all. Comparing the shapes then becomes a separate question with an independent answer, which is the ordinary working method of Indian palaeography.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
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.
Ranjana Ii continues the sign Brahmi Ii 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.
Related To
Quantity partners. Both are made with the tongue raised towards the hard palate, and the difference between them is duration alone.
Quantity partners. Both are made with the tongue raised towards the hard palate; Ii is the long counterpart of I.
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