Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Nga 𑀗
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
Nga is the velar nasal, the fifth and last member of the velar class, and the nasal made at the same place as ka. It never begins a word in Sanskrit or in the Prakrit of the inscriptions, and it occurs essentially only before another velar, so the independent letter is written far less often than its place in the order might suggest. Its position is structural rather than statistical: every class in the table closes with the nasal made at that class's own point of articulation, and that arrangement, worked out by the Indian phoneticians, is what the five by five table exists to record. On the page it is met most often not as a letter standing alone but as the upper element of a conjunct, above the velar that follows it.
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 velar nasal; fifth 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 PositionFifth consonant of the Brahmi order and the nasal that closes the velar 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 SoundVelar nasal. It never begins a word and occurs essentially only before another velar, so the independent letter is written far less often than its place suggests 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
A Letter Met Inside Other Letters
The velar nasal never begins a word in Sanskrit or in the Prakrit of the inscriptions and occurs essentially only immediately before another velar. Its whole life is therefore spent inside conjuncts, stacked above the stop it precedes, and the independent sign standing alone is a rarity on the page. That distribution is not an accident of vocabulary. The sound is what a nasal becomes when it is made at the same point as a following velar stop, and a language that assimilates its nasals to the following consonant will produce it in exactly one environment and nowhere else.
Sanskrit orthography gives a writer a choice about how to record it. A class nasal standing before a stop of its own class may be written with the nasal letter itself, forming a conjunct, or with the anusvara, a dot placed above the line that says a nasal is present and lets the following consonant determine which one. Both practices are old, both appear in manuscripts, and neither is wrong. The choice affects how often this letter is actually written, and it is one of the reasons a count of letters in a text is a poorer guide to the sound system than it looks. Where the dot is used the sound is present and the letter is not.
The Structural Argument for a Letter Nobody Writes
A letter with one environment and no word-initial use is a strange thing for an alphabet to spend a sign on, and the reason it has one is that the Indian phoneticians were describing a system rather than listing the sounds a writer would need. Their analysis asked where each nasal is made, found five points of articulation matching the five classes of stops, and gave each its own letter, so the table closes every class with the nasal of that class without exception. The regularity is the point: a learner who has the pattern can predict the fifth member of a class from its first four.
The five nasals are among the clearest evidence that the Brahmi inventory follows the Indian analysis of speech rather than the shape of any alphabet received from elsewhere. No script of western Asia distinguished nasals by place in this way, because no language written with those scripts required it, and a borrowed inventory would have had to invent the distinction from scratch. Whatever the origin of the individual letter shapes, and epigraphists have argued that question for the better part of two centuries without settling it, the arrangement of the inventory is Indian, and the velar nasal is one of the places where that shows most plainly.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Nga 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 αΉanga continues the sign Brahmi Nga 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 Nga continues the sign Brahmi Nga 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.
Tibetan nga continues the Brahmi nga, keeping its value and its place in the inherited order. The descent of the Tibetan script from the Brahmi family is not disputed; which Indic script of that family served as the immediate model in the seventh century is, and this link names the ancestor the atlas holds rather than choosing among the candidates.
Related To
The nasal of the velar class. Both are voiced and both are made with the back of the tongue against the soft palate, the nasal differing in that the closure is released through the nose.
The nasal of the velar class, and the letter that closes the group in the recited order before the table moves on to the next point of articulation.
The nasal of the velar class, made at the same point as this stop, with the back of the tongue against the soft palate and the breath let out through the nose. Every class in the table closes with its own nasal.
The nasal of the velar class, made at the same point as this stop, with the back of the tongue against the soft palate. Every class in the table closes with its own nasal, standing after the stop that opens the class.
The nasal of the velar class. The five nasals were arrived at by asking where each was made rather than by hearing one sound with variants.
Nga answers to Brahmi Nga, the nasal that closes the velar line in both scripts; Tibetan drops the intervening voiced aspirate Gha, per its own description of the palatal line's identical pruning.
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