U and the Syllable Built Downwards

Ranjana builds a syllable in four directions at once, and u is the letter that shows the downward one. A consonant hangs from the head stroke; a mark for i or e may stand to its left, a mark for aa or o to its right, a mark for the nasal above, and the marks for u and uu below. A syllable can therefore occupy space on all sides of its own consonant, and a line of Ranjana is not a row of letters but a row of clusters. To that the script adds the conjunct, in which two consonants meeting without a vowel between them are written as a single joined form, often with the second reduced and set beneath the first.

A conjunct that also carries a u mark stacks two things below the head stroke, and the result is the tall, dense sign that gives formal Ranjana its character on a page. This is the writing that Tibetan tradition adopted for ornament, where the script is known as Lantsa and appears on temple lintels, book covers and the inscriptions of paintings, chosen precisely because a Ranjana syllable is a compact block that fills a panel well. What is being reproduced in those settings is the shape of the writing; the practice attached to the syllables is transmitted separately and under initiation, and is not described here.