Ranjana Nga

Nga is the fifth and last cell of the velar row, the nasal made at the same point as the four stops before it. Every row of the consonant grid closes this way, with the nasal formed where that row's stops are formed, so the recitation of a class moves through a place of articulation and then shuts it. That design has a consequence a learner notices at once: there are five nasal letters in the chart rather than the one or two most European alphabets carry, and each belongs to its own class rather than standing alone.

In Sanskrit this letter occurs almost entirely before other velars rather than independently, since a nasal assimilates to the consonant that follows it, so the sign is common in clusters and rare on its own. Ranjana writes it as it writes any consonant, hanging from the head stroke and carrying the inherent short a, and it appears most often as the first element of a joined form. Its position in the chart is nonetheless fixed and taught, because the row is recited whole and a class with a missing member would no longer teach the pattern that makes the rest of the grid predictable. The nasal column is also the place where the number of letters in a Brahmic chart surprises a reader most. Five nasals is not an extravagance but a consequence of describing sounds by where they are made, and a chart that grouped them together would have hidden the very relationship it was built to show.

A script that carries five nasal letters also carries a shortcut, and the tension between the two is one of the small practical questions a scribe of any Brahmic script has to settle. Beside the five class nasals stands the anusvara, a single mark written above the head stroke that indicates a nasal whose exact quality is determined by whatever consonant follows. Where the following consonant makes the quality predictable, either sign will do, and manuscript practice varies. Using the mark is quicker and takes less room on a line; using the full letter is more explicit and looks more formal.

In an ornamental hand written for display the choice is also an aesthetic one, since a mark above the bar keeps the syllable narrow while a full nasal letter widens it and changes the rhythm of a panel. Ranjana was used chiefly where the page mattered, on covers, in headings and in the writing of mantras, so these were live decisions rather than incidental ones. This is the kind of detail a modern typeface has to reproduce as well, and it is one of the reasons that digitising an unencoded script is harder than drawing its letters: the shapes are only part of the problem, and the behaviour is the rest.