Alphabet Letters
Ranjana Nna
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
Nna is the fifteenth consonant of the Ranjana varnamala and the nasal that closes the retroflex class. Sanskrit has a well known rule by which a dental n becomes this retroflex nasal at a distance, when certain sounds precede it in the same word, and the rule is one of the first pieces of Sanskrit phonology a student meets. A script that writes Sanskrit must therefore distinguish the two nasals sharply, and Ranjana does, with letters that are not easily confused on the page. Ranjana has no Unicode allocation, so this entry stores no character; the form shown is a vector outline of the letter, taken from an openly licensed Ranjana typeface.
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 retroflex class, held apart from the dental nasal by a well known rule of Sanskrit phonology. 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 PositionFifteenth of the thirty-three consonants, the nasal closing the retroflex varga 2Tradition: The Ranjana varnamala Attributions
Associated SoundRetroflex nasal; Sanskrit turns a dental n into this letter at a distance under a well known rule 2Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians 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 3Tradition: Digital text encoding Learn More
Nna: The Ranjana Letter
Nna is the fifth and last cell of the retroflex row, the nasal made with the tongue tip curled back. It closes the third class in the same way the velar and palatal nasals close the first two, and it stands to the dental nasal of the following row exactly as the retroflex stops stand to the dental ones: a separate consonant, not a variant. Sanskrit distinguishes the two nasals in ordinary words, and a rule of the language turns a dental nasal into this retroflex one under stated conditions elsewhere in a word, which is one of the sound changes the grammatical tradition describes at length.
The letter is therefore common. In Ranjana it is written as any consonant, hanging from the head stroke with the inherent short a already present, and it enters joined forms freely. Its position in the chart is where the retroflex class ends and the dental class begins, the two rows that most often need to be told apart and that the order deliberately places side by side. The letter also illustrates how much of Sanskrit spelling follows from rule rather than from habit. A scribe who knows the rule that produces the retroflex nasal does not have to remember which words take it, which is a considerable saving in a language whose vocabulary is built by combination.
Nna and the Five Nasals in the Order
Placing each nasal at the end of its own class rather than gathering the nasals together is one of the arrangement's quiet strengths, and it takes a moment to see why. A nasal is made at a point of articulation just as a stop is, so it belongs with the stops made at the same point, and grouping them by manner instead would break the correspondence the chart exists to show. It also matches how the language behaves, since a nasal before a consonant assimilates to that consonant's class, and the chart's arrangement puts each nasal next to the sounds it will assimilate to. The recitation reinforces the logic: a class is said as a unit and ends on its nasal, so the ear learns the grouping before the eye does.
Ranjana carries the arrangement unchanged, as every script of the family does. This is why a Ranjana chart, a Devanagari chart and a Brahmi chart can be laid side by side and read across, and why the correspondences between them can be stated with confidence letter by letter rather than being guessed from shape. It is also why the correspondences recorded in this atlas can be stated as facts about position rather than as impressions about shape. Two letters that occupy the same cell of the same inherited grid are the same letter of the same series, whatever their drawings look like.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
Ranjana Nna continues the sign Brahmi Nna 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 Nna and Devanagari Nna 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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