Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Vocalic Rr 𑀌
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
Vocalic Rr is the long counterpart of the syllabic r, and it exists to complete a pattern more than to carry a working load. Sanskrit uses it in a narrow set of forms, chiefly the genitive plural of stems ending in r, and the Prakrit of the Ashokan edicts had no syllabic vowels at all. The letter therefore belongs to the later, Sanskrit-writing Brahmi, and it is among the signs an inscription of the third century BCE gives no occasion to cut. It keeps its place in the order because the vowel series is built on short and long pairs, and a gap in the pattern would have been harder to teach and to recite than a letter that is seldom needed. The same preference for a complete pattern governs the syllabic l that follows it in the order, whose long form has no attested word behind it at all.
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 SoundA long syllabic r, held for two morae; in Sanskrit it occurs almost only in the genitive plural of stems ending in r 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 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 syllabic r; eighth letter 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 PositionEighth letter of the Brahmi order and the long partner of the seventh 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 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe Middle Indo-Aryan of the Ashokan edicts had no such sound, so the letter belongs to the Brahmi later adapted for writing Sanskrit rather than to the language of the earliest inscriptions 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
The Long Syllabic R, and Where It Actually Occurs
Sanskrit uses this vowel in a narrow and well defined set of places. Its principal home is the genitive plural of stems ending in r, where an ending beginning with a nasal lengthens the stem vowel, so the forms meaning of the fathers, of the mothers and of the makers all carry it. Outside that pattern it is very nearly absent from the working vocabulary, and a text of considerable length can pass without any occasion to write it. The grammarians nonetheless treat it as a full member of the vowel table, with the same standing as a and i, because the analysis is built on pairs of short and long and the pairing is what makes the table teachable.
That is the honest account of the letter and it is worth stating plainly rather than dressing up. A sign that writes one grammatical ending is still doing real work, and the ending in question is common enough in liturgical and legal formulas that a reader of inscriptions will meet it. But the letter is in the order because of the shape of the analysis, not because of the frequency of the sound, and the Indian tradition was explicit about the difference. A complete pattern can be recited; an incomplete one has to be memorised as a list of exceptions.
A Sign Waiting for a Language
Like the short syllabic r before it, this letter has nothing to do in the Prakrit of the Ashokan edicts, whose sound system had no syllabic vowels at all. It belongs to the Sanskrit-writing use of the script rather than to the earliest inscriptions, and the surviving epigraphic material of the third century BCE gives no occasion to cut it. Its earliest attestations therefore come from later material, and the sign is among those a palaeographer has the fewest examples of to work from when dating a hand.
Its survival is a matter of transmission rather than of use. The order of letters was learned and recited as a whole object, and a position in that order is not conditional on there being words in the language that need it. Every script descended from Brahmi carries the letter forward, including scripts adapted for Dravidian and Southeast Asian languages that have no syllabic liquids of any kind, and it is still taught in eighth place in the alphabets of South Asia today. The Unicode Standard encodes it in the Brahmi block alongside the letters that are in constant use, for the same reason that a printed alphabet chart includes it: the order is the object, and the order is complete.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived from This
Devanagari Vocalic Rr 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 Vocalic Rr continues the sign Brahmi Vocalic Rr 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 among the syllabic liquids. The long form is confined to a narrow set of Sanskrit endings and has no place in the Prakrit of the earliest inscriptions.
Quantity partners among the syllabic liquids. Vocalic Rr is the long counterpart of Vocalic R, confined to a narrow set of Sanskrit endings.
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