Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Old Tamil Rra 𑀶
Brahmi Letters
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
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
Old Tamil Rra writes an alveolar sound transliterated with an r and a dot beneath it, distinct from the r that the inherited Brahmi order already had, and Tamil keeps the two apart in ordinary words. Like the other Tamil additions it answers to a Dravidian sound with no Indo-Aryan counterpart. It belongs to Tamil-Brahmi, the southern use of the script in which the letters received from the north were supplemented rather than merely adapted, and that extension is the clearest sign of a writing system being fitted to a language of a different family. Tamil keeps a set of distinctions among its liquids and nasals that Indo-Aryan does not make at all, and the three additions to Brahmi in the far south are all of that kind.
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 Tamil alveolar r; a Tamil-Brahmi addition for a Dravidian sound 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters Transmission
Manuscript TraditionThis letter, added for a sound not found in Sanskrit, is attested in Tamil Brahmi cave inscriptions from around the second century BCE rather than in the Asokan edicts themselves. 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 of the three Old Tamil additions, standing after the thirty-four consonants of the received order 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 SoundAn alveolar sound transliterated with an r and a dot beneath, held apart in Tamil from the r the received Brahmi order already provided 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceA Tamil-Brahmi letter, added in the southern use of the script for a Dravidian sound that the Brahmi inventory received from the north could not write 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Learn More
Two R Sounds, Held Apart
Tamil distinguishes two r sounds where Indo-Aryan has one. The inherited letter writes a flap made behind the teeth; this additional letter writes an alveolar sound made further forward, and the two separate ordinary words in the language, so a script serving Tamil cannot manage with the single sign it received from the north. The distinction is Dravidian and it is one of a set that the northern alphabet had no reason to provide for.
The letter also carries a use that has no counterpart in the inherited system. Written double, it is pronounced not as a long r but as an affricate, a stop released into a fricative, and written after the alveolar nasal it produces a further cluster that Tamil treats as a unit. A reader coming to Tamil from a northern Indic language finds those values counter-intuitive, because the relation between the doubled letter and the single one is not the ordinary relation between a long consonant and a short one.
Modern Tamil keeps the letter, and so does Malayalam. The other Dravidian literary languages have lost the distinction it marks or record it differently, so its presence in an alphabet is one of the ways the southern branch of the family divides internally rather than merely differing from the north.
Fitting a Script to a Different Family
The three letters Tamil-Brahmi added are the clearest case in the whole family of a writing system being fitted to a language it was not made for. The received inventory was worked out by phoneticians describing Indo-Aryan, and it is an excellent description of Indo-Aryan: five classes of stops with four combinations of voice and aspiration each, three sibilants, four semivowels. Applied to a Dravidian language it is wrong in both directions at once. It provides four cells per class where the language needs two, since Dravidian does not contrast voice and aspiration the way Indo-Aryan does, and it fails to provide for a set of liquids and nasals that Dravidian holds apart.
Tamil-Brahmi answered the second problem by adding letters and left the first alone, keeping the full inherited table with its unused cells rather than pruning it. That is the conservative choice, and it is the same conservatism that keeps the syllabic vowels in alphabets used for languages that never had them: an order that is recited whole is easier to keep intact than to edit.
The result is that a Tamil alphabet chart carries letters the language does not use alongside letters no other branch of the family has, and both facts are historical rather than phonetic.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Originates in Language
The letter exists because Tamil needs it. The alveolar r it writes is held apart from the inherited r in ordinary Tamil words and has no Indo-Aryan counterpart.
Related To
The r of the inherited order, from which Tamil holds this letter apart in ordinary words. The distinction is Dravidian and has no counterpart in Sanskrit or Prakrit.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.