Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Tta 𑀝
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
Tta is the voiceless unaspirated retroflex stop and the head of the third class, made with the tip of the tongue curled back to strike the roof of the mouth. The grammarians call the class murdhanya, from the word for the crown of the head, after the point they took the sound to be made at. Retroflex consonants are a defining feature of South Asian speech and are shared across the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian families, and Brahmi gives the whole class its own five letters, a provision no alphabet borrowed unchanged from outside the region would have made. The origin of the retroflex series in Indo-Aryan is itself argued over, some holding it a development from inside the family and others a feature taken up from Dravidian neighbours.
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 its own sound plus the inherent short a, 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 voiceless unaspirated retroflex; eleventh consonant of the Brahmi order 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters 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 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 PositionEleventh consonant of the Brahmi order and head of the retroflex class, the third of the five classes 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy How the Letter JoinsConsonants that meet with no vowel between them are written as a conjunct, the second stacked beneath or ligatured to the first, rather than as two separate signs 1Tradition: Comparative writing systems Attributions
Associated SoundVoiceless unaspirated retroflex stop, made with the tip of the tongue curled back to strike the roof of the mouth; the grammarians call the class murdhanya 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
Where the Retroflex Stops Come From
Retroflex consonants are pervasive in Sanskrit and they are not straightforwardly inherited. Most of the retroflex stops in the classical language can be traced to specific sources: to clusters that assimilated, to the effect of a neighbouring retroflex sibilant, and to a substantial body of vocabulary that Indo-Aryan took up from the other language families of the subcontinent. A great many Sanskrit words containing a retroflex have no convincing Indo-European etymology, and the concentration of the sounds in that part of the vocabulary is one of the central pieces of evidence in a long argument about how much Indo-Aryan owes to its neighbours.
That argument is genuinely unsettled and the atlas records it as such elsewhere. What is not in dispute is that the sounds are there, that they are shared across the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian families alike, and that they are one of the features that make South Asia a linguistic area rather than merely a place where several families happen to be spoken. Brahmi gives the whole class five letters of its own, which is a provision no inventory borrowed unchanged from western Asia could have made, since nothing written with those scripts needed it. The class is written and read exactly as the other four are, with the same four stops and a nasal.
A Class the Middle Language Made Busier
The retroflex series expanded rather than contracted as Old Indo-Aryan gave way to Middle Indo-Aryan. A large family of inherited consonant clusters containing an r or a retroflex element assimilated into doubled retroflex stops, so words that show a cluster in Sanskrit routinely show a retroflex in the Prakrit of the Ashokan edicts. The class is if anything more prominent in the earliest surviving Brahmi than in the classical language the script was later adapted to write.
That gives the palaeographer a good supply of examples in the third century BCE, which is not true of every part of the inventory. It also means the retroflex letters can be traced continuously from the edicts through the donative records of the following centuries into the Kushana and Gupta hands and out into both branches of the family. The southern branch matters particularly here, because the Dravidian languages have the retroflex series independently and in full, so the letters that Indo-Aryan needed for a partly borrowed set of sounds were exactly what the languages of the far south required for sounds of their own. A script fitted to one family arrived in the south already carrying most of what the other family needed.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Tta 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 Tta continues the sign Brahmi Tta 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.
The Gurmukhi letter Ṭainka continues the sign Brahmi Tta writes in the same place of the inherited series. The descent is not direct: it runs through the Sharada script of the northwest and then the Landa hands of the Punjab, and it is stated from position in the order rather than from shape.
Related To
Voicing partners in the retroflex class. Both are unaspirated stops made with the tip of the tongue curled back against the roof of the mouth, and the vocal folds vibrate through the closure of the second.
Opposite corners of the retroflex class, the third of the five groups of five. One is voiceless and unaspirated, the other voiced and aspirated, and the class holds all four combinations of the two features.
The nasal of the retroflex class, made at the same point as this stop, with the tip of the tongue curled back against the roof of the mouth and the breath let out through the nose. Every class in the table closes with its own nasal.
The nasal of the retroflex class, made at the same point as this stop, with the tip of the tongue curled back against the roof of the mouth. Every class in the table closes with its own nasal, standing after the stop that opens the class.
Aspiration partners in the retroflex class. The two are the same voiceless stop, and only the breath that follows the release separates them.
Sources
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