Ranjana Ba

Ba is the third cell of the labial row, the plain voiced labial, made with the lips closed and the vocal folds vibrating. It stands to Pa exactly as Ga stands to Ka, Ja to Ca, Dda to Tta and Da to Ta, which is the fifth and last instance of a pattern the chart has now demonstrated in full. Sanskrit uses the letter widely.

In Ranjana it is written as every consonant sign is written, carrying the inherent short a, hanging from the head stroke, taking its vowel marks in the four positions the script uses and joining with a following consonant into a stacked form where no vowel comes between them. Its place in the order can be found by counting rows and columns from any other stop, which is the practical test of whether a chart of this kind has been understood: not whether the shapes can be recalled, but whether the position of a sound can be worked out from the scheme itself. Ba is also a letter whose distinction from the labial semivowel later blurred in some regional traditions, which is a reminder that a chart records the analysis of the classical language and not the pronunciation of every place and period that used the script. That gap between the chart and the mouth is normal rather than a fault. A writing system inherited with a grammatical description attached keeps the description fixed while the speaking changes around it, which is why the same letters can serve languages and centuries that would not have understood one another.

A manuscript in the Newar tradition is not only a text but a made object, and Ranjana belongs to the part of it that is looked at. Covers were painted and sometimes carved, title lines were written in the formal hand, and a completed manuscript could be a dedication as much as a copy, produced through the sponsorship of a household and kept in a collection where it had a place in the life of a community rather than only in a library. That context explains the design of the script better than any account of its letterforms alone. A hand with heavy stems and a strong bar, with wedge terminals and a marked contrast between thick and thin, is a hand for a page that is meant to be handled and seen. The same qualities are what recommended it beyond the Valley.

When Tibetan traditions adopted the script for ornament they were adopting a hand already shaped by the requirements of display, and they used it in the settings where those requirements are strongest, on the outside of things rather than in the body of a text. Knowing that also changes what counts as evidence about the script. The history of Ranjana is written as much in objects, covers and inscriptions as in texts, and an account drawn only from the bodies of manuscripts would understate how much of the script survives.