Alphabet Letters
Brahmi O 𑀑
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
O is the back mid vowel, always long and always heavy in metre, and historically the outcome of a and u falling together. It stands to u as e stands to i, the first strengthening grade of the back vowel, and the Brahmi order places it thirteenth, among the four vowels the grammarians treat as compound. Its mark combines the elements used for the e vowels and for the a vowels, so the writing records the analysis the phoneticians gave the sound rather than treating it as a single unanalysed thing. The Old Tamil use of Brahmi needed a short o against this long one, a distinction the Sanskrit and Prakrit uses of the script never had to make. In Middle Indo-Aryan the sound is common, since the older au largely fell together with it, and the letter is accordingly frequent in the edicts.
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 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 vowel o, always long in Sanskrit; thirteenth letter 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 PositionThirteenth letter of the Brahmi order and the third of the compound vowels 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 Attributions
Associated SoundThe back mid vowel, always long and heavy in metre in Sanskrit; historically the outcome of a and u combining, and the first strengthening grade of u 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
O in the Language of the Edicts
Middle Indo-Aryan is generous with this vowel. The older au largely fell together with it, several inherited combinations resolved into it, and the Prakrit of the Ashokan edicts uses it constantly, so it is among the vowels a reader of the earliest Brahmi meets most often. In Sanskrit it is the first strengthening grade of u, standing to that vowel as e stands to i, and it is the outcome of a and u meeting at a junction, so it can mark a seam between two words as readily as it can belong to one.
The vowel is always long in Sanskrit and always heavy in metre, with no short counterpart in the classical language, and that shortage is one of the two places where the inherited vowel series does not fit a Dravidian language. Tamil contrasts a short o with a long one in ordinary words, so the southern use of the script had to provide for a distinction the northern one had never needed. It is a small thing beside the three consonants Tamil-Brahmi added outright, but it belongs to the same story: an inventory worked out for one family of languages being fitted, piece by piece, to another. In Sanskrit derivation the vowel appears wherever a suffix calls for the strengthened grade of a root containing u.
A Sign That Shows Its Own Analysis
The Brahmi mark for this vowel combines the element used for the e vowels with the element used for the long a, so the sign written on the page is an assembly of the parts the phoneticians said the sound was made of. Indian phonetics described o as the coming together of a and u, and the writing follows the description rather than treating the sound as a single unanalysed thing needing a single arbitrary shape. Very few writing systems do anything of the kind, and where it happens it is almost always because the script was designed by people who had already analysed the sounds.
That is the situation Brahmi is in. Whatever the ultimate source of its letter shapes, and epigraphists have argued about that for the better part of two centuries, the arrangement and the internal logic of the inventory follow the Indian analysis of speech rather than the order of any alphabet received from outside. The vowel series is the clearest place to see it: pairs of short and long, then the compound vowels written as compounds, then the consonants running from the back of the mouth to the front. The shapes may be borrowed and the system is not, and keeping those two questions apart is the beginning of reading the argument about the script's origin honestly.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari O 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 O continues the sign Brahmi O 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 na ro continues the Brahmi o, 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.
Related To
Successive grades of the same series. The mark for au is built on the mark for o, so the four compound vowels are written as one family of shapes.
First strengthening grade. O stands to u exactly as e stands to i, and the parallel between the front and back series is one of the things the vowel order is arranged to show.
Na ro, the vowel sign for o, answers to Brahmi O, the independent vowel letter for the same sound in the ancestor script.
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