Alphabet Letters
Devanagari Nga ङ
Devanagari Letters
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Origin Devanagari forms settle between roughly the seventh and the tenth centuries CE, descending from Brahmi through the Gupta and Nagari hands
Nga is the fifth consonant of the varnamala, the velar nasal and the closing member of the first varga. Every varga ends with the nasal made at its own place of articulation, so the five nasals of Sanskrit are distributed one to each class, and this arrangement is the clearest single demonstration that the table is organised by anatomy. In Sanskrit the sound never begins a word and occurs almost entirely before a velar stop, where it is the nasal the mouth naturally produces in that position; a reader meets it chiefly inside words rather than at their head. Its independent letter is therefore comparatively rare on a page, though the sound itself is common in speech.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodDevanagari forms settle between roughly the seventh and the tenth centuries CE, descending from Brahmi through the Gupta and Nagari hands 3Tradition: Indian epigraphy Place of OriginNorthern India 3Tradition: Indian epigraphy Origin of the NameNamed by its own sound plus the inherent short a. Devanagari letter names carry no word meaning, unlike the Greek and Semitic names 1Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Sense of the NameThe velar nasal that closes the first varga; never begins a Sanskrit word and occurs almost entirely before a velar stop. 2 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceCounted among the matrika, the fifty little mothers of the letter-garland; the count belongs to the series, not to this letter alone 4Tradition: Hindu Tantra, the garland of letters A property of the fifty-letter series. Individual schools assign further correspondences that differ between traditions and are not adopted here. Identity
Script TypeConsonant sign of a Brahmi-derived abugida; it carries the inherent short a unless a dependent vowel sign is written 1 PositionFifth consonant of the varnamala, the nasal closing the velar class 1Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Attributions
Associated SoundVelar nasal. Never begins a Sanskrit word and occurs essentially only before a velar stop, so the independent letter is seldom written 2Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Learn More
Nga: The Nasal That Closes the Velar Class
Nga is the fifth consonant of the varnamala, the velar nasal and the closing member of the first varga. Every varga ends with the nasal made at its own place of articulation, so the five nasals of Sanskrit are distributed one to each class, and that distribution is the clearest single demonstration that the table is organised by anatomy rather than by inheritance. A nasal is a stop in which the closure in the mouth is complete but the soft palate is lowered so the air escapes through the nose, and there is therefore exactly one possible nasal for each point of closure. The grammarians put each where it belongs.
In Sanskrit the velar nasal never begins a word and occurs almost entirely before a velar stop, where it is simply the nasal the mouth produces when the following closure is at the soft palate. English has the same sound in the middle and at the end of words and never at the beginning, for the same reason. The consequence is that the independent letter is comparatively rare on a Devanagari page even though the sound itself is common in speech: what a reader usually sees is the nasal written as part of a conjunct with the stop that follows it, or replaced by the anusvara, the dot written above the headline that stands for a nasal whose exact quality is fixed by what comes next.
The Five Nasals, and the Dot That Can Replace Them
Taking the five nasals together shows how much work the varnamala's arrangement does. Sanskrit has a nasal at every one of its five points of closure, and in a cluster the nasal that appears is normally the one belonging to the class of the following stop, so the choice is predictable from the consonant that comes after. Because it is predictable, the script offers a shorthand: the anusvara, a dot written above the headline, marks that a nasal is present and leaves its quality to be read off the following letter. Manuscripts and printed editions differ in how far they use the dot rather than writing the nasal out, and editors of Sanskrit texts have to make a policy about it.
The one nasal that behaves independently is the dental, which begins words freely and appears in positions where no following stop determines it. The velar, palatal and retroflex nasals are largely positional, and the labial nasal sits between the two behaviours. Understanding that distribution is what makes the five letters usable, and it is not something a reader can infer from a chart that presents them as five equal signs. In the Tantric count of fifty matrika all five are included, and the anusvara is counted separately from them as one of the two additional marks that bring the total to fifty.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
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.
Related To
Devanagari Nga and the Gurmukhi letter Ṅanga answer to the same sound and to the same slot of the varnamala. Gurmukhi descends from Sharada rather than from the Nagari line, so the agreement is inherited from a shared Brahmi ancestor rather than borrowed from Devanagari.
?anga and the Devanagari letter Nga answer to the same sound and to the same slot of the varnamala. Gurmukhi descends from Sharada rather than from the Nagari line, so the agreement is inherited from a shared Brahmi ancestor rather than borrowed from Devanagari.
Ranjana Nga and Devanagari Nga hold the same position in the inherited varnamala and write the same sound, as separate northern Brahmi descendants rather than as variants of one script. Devanagari is the relative most readers know, so the two charts can be read against each other.
The same letter of the same order in Devanagari. The two scripts are separate descendants of the same late Brahmi stock rather than one being taken from the other, which is why the sound value and the position agree while the shapes do not.
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