Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Lla 𑀴
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
Lla is a retroflex lateral, made with the tongue tip curled back against the roof of the mouth. Classical Sanskrit does not treat it as a separate sound, but Vedic recitation keeps it, several Middle Indo-Aryan dialects use it, and it is current across the Dravidian languages, so the script needed a letter for it even where the grammar of Sanskrit did not. It stands last among the thirty-four consonants, after the aspirate that closes the inherited order, which is where a script usually puts what it has added rather than what it received. Several of the descendant scripts keep the letter and several do not, and its presence or absence is one of the ways an alphabet shows which languages it was made to serve.
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. Attributions
Associated SoundRetroflex lateral, made with the tongue tip curled back against the roof of the mouth; not a separate sound in classical Sanskrit but present in Vedic and in Dravidian 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy 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 retroflex lateral; thirty-fourth and last consonant of the Brahmi order 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters 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 PositionThirty-fourth consonant of the Brahmi order, standing after the aspirate that closes the inherited alphabet 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 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceNot a separate sound in classical Sanskrit, but kept in Vedic recitation and current in Dravidian and in several Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, which is why the script provides a letter for it 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Transmission
Manuscript TraditionAttested from the Asokan rock and pillar edicts of the third century BCE, the earliest substantial Brahmi corpus. 2 Learn More
A Letter Sanskrit Does Not Need and Vedic Does
Classical Sanskrit does not treat the retroflex lateral as a separate sound, and by the standards of the classical grammar the letter is unnecessary. Vedic recitation keeps it, and the received text of the Rigveda writes it wherever a voiced retroflex stop stands between vowels, so the oldest layer of the literature uses a sign that the later layer does not. The substitution is described in the classical grammars, and it is one of the clearest cases in the alphabet of a letter preserved by a tradition of recitation rather than by the grammar of the written language.
The sound is otherwise a living one across a wide area. Several Middle Indo-Aryan dialects use it, it is current in Marathi, Gujarati and Oriya among the modern Indo-Aryan languages, and it is standard equipment across the Dravidian family, so a script serving any of those needs the letter whatever Sanskrit requires.
Its position at the end of the consonants, after the aspirate that closes the inherited order, marks it as an addition rather than an inheritance. That placement is the ordinary convention for anything added to a recited sequence, and the same position later received the three consonants that Tamil-Brahmi supplied for Dravidian sounds and, in some traditions, the cluster recited as a letter after them.
Present in Some Alphabets, Absent From Others
Whether a descendant of Brahmi carries this letter is a straightforward statement about the language it serves. Marathi, Gujarati and Oriya keep it because they use the sound. Standard Hindi does not, and its alphabet chart accordingly omits it, though the same Devanagari script writes it when used for Marathi. Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Sinhala all have it, since the Dravidian family uses the sound throughout and Sinhala shares the areal feature.
That variation makes the letter useful as a marker. An alphabet chart is a compact statement of what a language needs, and the presence or absence of one letter at the end of the consonants tells a reader something about the sound system without any further inquiry. The same test applies to the three Tamil additions, which are found only in the alphabets of the far south, and to the dotted letters of the north, which are found only where Persian and Arabic vocabulary entered in quantity.
Brahmi had the letter from early enough for it to be inherited widely rather than reinvented, which is why the scripts that have it agree on where it sits. Where a feature is inherited the descendants agree; where it was added independently they do not, and telling the two cases apart is one of the ordinary problems of comparing these alphabets.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Related To
The stop this letter stands for in Vedic recitation. In the received text of the Rigveda an intervocalic retroflex stop is read and written as this lateral, a substitution the classical language does not make.
The dental lateral this letter answers to. The two are laterals at different points of articulation, and an alphabet that holds them apart is serving a language that needs both.
The retroflex lateral of the inherited order, which is a different sound from this one. The tongue makes contact for the received letter and approaches without contact for the Tamil addition.
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