Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Dha 𑀥
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
Dha is the voiced aspirated dental, the fourth member of the class, made with the tongue at the teeth and released with breathy voice. Sanskrit keeps a full set of voiced aspirates where most of its Indo-European relatives lost them, and the four letters that write them carried a good deal of weight in the comparative study of those languages in the nineteenth century. In Brahmi it is a single letter for a single sound, not a compound of two, and the script gives it exactly the same standing as every other stop in the table of five classes. In the Prakrit of the edicts it is common, because Middle Indo-Aryan kept the voiced aspirates where it lost a good deal else from the older sound system.
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 voiced aspirated dental; nineteenth consonant 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 PositionNineteenth consonant of the Brahmi order and fourth member of the dental class 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 SoundVoiced aspirated dental stop, breathy voiced, and a single articulation rather than a d followed by an h 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
The Letter of the Edicts
The word that runs through the Ashokan inscriptions more than any other begins with this consonant. In the Prakrit of the edicts it is spelled with a doubled aspirated dental, and it names what the emperor claims to be promoting: a moral order, described in the inscriptions in terms of restraint, generosity, truthfulness and care for living creatures, and deliberately framed in language that no single religious community owns. The edicts announce officers appointed to oversee it, describe its practice as superior to ceremony, and set out the emperor's own conduct as an example of it.
The Sanskrit root behind the word means to place, to hold or to support, and it is among the most productive in the language. Its derivatives cover a wide field: what is established, what upholds, a container, a receptacle, a stratum. The same root supplies the terms for concentration in the meditative vocabulary and the words for the treasury and the storehouse in the administrative one.
For a reader of early Brahmi the letter is therefore unavoidable. It appears in the opening formula of edict after edict, in the titles of officials and in the abstract vocabulary the inscriptions use to describe what they are for. Learning to recognise it is one of the first steps in reading the Mauryan material at all, and it is attested in enormous quantity from the earliest surviving inscriptions onward.
A Series Sanskrit Kept
Voiced aspirated stops are one of the features that made Sanskrit central to the study of language in nineteenth-century Europe. Most of the older Indo-European languages had lost the series, merging it into plain voiced stops or turning it into fricatives, and Sanskrit had kept all four. When scholars began comparing Sanskrit with Greek, Latin and the Germanic languages, the regular correspondences between these letters and quite different sounds in each of the others were among the clearest evidence that the resemblance among the languages was systematic.
Middle Indo-Aryan kept the voiced aspirates too, where it lost a good deal else, so the letter is common in the Prakrit of the edicts rather than being a refinement of the later Sanskrit-writing script. That is fortunate for the palaeography, since a letter attested in quantity in the earliest material gives a firm anchor for the sequence of its shapes.
The phonetic tradition is emphatic that the sound is a single articulation and not a stop followed by a separate breath, which is why Brahmi writes it with one letter. Speakers of languages that lack the sound reliably hear it as two, and the two-letter transliteration used in European scholarship encourages the mistake. The Indian analysis rejected that reading two and a half thousand years ago, and modern phonetic description agrees with it.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Dha 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.
The Gurmukhi letter Dhaddha continues the sign Brahmi Dha 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.
Ranjana Dha continues the sign Brahmi Dha 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
Aspiration partners in the dental class. Both are voiced, and the second is released with the breathy voice that Sanskrit kept where most of its relatives lost it.
The nasal of the dental class, and the letter that closes the group in the recited order before the table moves on to the next point of articulation.
Opposite corners of the dental class, the fourth 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.
Voicing partners in the dental class. Both are aspirated stops, and they differ only in voice, which is the second of the two features the table is built on.
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