Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Aa 𑀆
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
Aa is the long counterpart of the first vowel, the same throat sound held for two morae rather than one. Brahmi pairs a short and a long vowel through the whole first part of its order, and the pairing is a matter of duration alone, not of the place the sound is made. The independent letter appears only at the start of a word; after a consonant the same vowel is written as a mark attached to the consonant sign, which is how an abugida records a vowel that is not the inherent one. Length is not decorative in these languages. It separates words that are otherwise identical, and it decides whether a syllable counts as light or heavy in the quantitative metres of the verse the script was used to record.
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 long a vowel; second 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 PositionSecond letter of the Brahmi order and the long partner of the first vowel 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 SoundLong a, the same throat vowel held for two morae; after a consonant it is written as a mark on the consonant sign rather than as this letter 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
Where the Long A Does Its Work
Long a is not simply a held version of the short vowel in the grammar; it is a working piece of Sanskrit morphology. It marks the great majority of feminine stems, so the ending distinguishes a masculine noun from its feminine counterpart across the whole vocabulary of the language, and it appears in the endings of the instrumental and the nominative plural of several stem classes. It is also the outcome of two short a vowels meeting at a junction, so a long vowel on the page may be a long vowel in the word or the visible seam between two words that ran together.
The vowel carries a second load in derivation. The grammatical tradition describes a ladder of strengthening applied to a root when a suffix calls for it, and for the a vowel the higher grade is simply the long one, so a form built from a strengthened root shows this vowel where the plain root shows the short one. That is the mechanism behind a large number of Sanskrit nouns built from verbs. Long a is also a prefix in its own right, placed before a verb to turn a motion away into a motion towards, which is why so many words in the religious vocabulary of the subcontinent open with it. All three uses put the vowel at the head of a word, and a word-initial vowel is the one case in which the script has to write the independent letter rather than a mark.
Two Morae, and Why the Inscriptions Keep Them Apart
Vowel length in these languages is quantity, measured in morae, and the count decides the shape of a line of verse. A syllable is heavy if its vowel is long, or if a cluster of consonants follows a short one, and the classical metres are patterns of heavy and light syllables rather than of stress. A scribe who lost the distinction between the two a vowels would make the verse unreadable as verse, and that is one reason the mark for the long vowel is kept distinct even in rapidly cut inscriptions where other letters are formed loosely.
The distinction survives the whole descent of the script. Every alphabet that comes out of Brahmi keeps a separate sign for the long vowel, in both its independent and its attached form, and keeps it in second place in the recited order. It survives even in the Prakrit of the Ashokan edicts, where a good deal else of the older sound system had already fallen together, because length remained meaningful in Middle Indo-Aryan. Where the descendants differ from one another is in the shape of the mark rather than in whether they have one. Comparing that one mark across the regional hands of the centuries after the Mauryan period is a routine method of Indian palaeography, since a sign this common gives a palaeographer plenty of examples to date an undated inscription against.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Aa 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 Aa continues the sign Brahmi Aa 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.
Related To
Quantity partners. The two vowels share a throat position and differ only in whether the sound is held for one mora or for two, and the Brahmi order sets them side by side for that reason.
Quantity partners. The two vowels share a throat position and differ only in whether the sound is held for one mora or for two; Aa is the long counterpart of A.
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