Ranjana O

O is the thirteenth letter of the Ranjana varnamala and the third of the compound vowels. Its structure mirrors that of e exactly: where e is analysed as the product of a and a vowel of the palatal group, o is the product of a and a vowel of the labial group, and the two therefore stand in the same relation to their simple partners. In speech it is a single long vowel made with the back of the tongue raised and the lips rounded, always long, with no short counterpart in the classical language. Its mark is written above the head stroke, alongside those for e and ai, and the independent letter shown here is used where the vowel opens a word or follows another vowel. Of the four compound vowels o is the one a reader is likely to meet first in the material Ranjana chiefly carries, because it opens the syllable om, which begins a great many Sanskrit invocations and is the first syllable of the six syllable mantra that the script is most often used to write on prayer wheels and on carved stone.

The letter's derivation from a and a labial vowel also explains a feature of the writing that puzzles beginners. Because o is analysed as a compound, some traditions of teaching present its mark as built from two parts rather than as a single stroke, and the shape in several Brahmic scripts does read that way. Ranjana's own mark sits above the head stroke as a unit, but the analysis behind it is the same one that governs every script of the family.

Ranjana is more widely seen than it is read, and the reason is the syllable that begins with this vowel. Om written in Ranjana appears on prayer wheels, on the carved stones of mani walls, over doorways, on book covers and in the borders of painted works, and it travelled with Tibetan Buddhism far beyond the Kathmandu Valley where the script belongs.

Under the name Lantsa the script became the standard ornamental hand for Sanskrit syllables in Tibetan settings, so a great deal of what a visitor sees as Tibetan decoration is in fact Newar writing. That is a fact about the script's reach and not an invitation to read the practice off the ornament. The syllables have a use in contemplative practice which is transmitted under initiation within living traditions, and describing that use is not the atlas's business; what is public is the writing, its history and its shapes. The letter o, and the mark for it written above the head stroke, is where a great deal of that writing starts. A reader who learns to recognise this one mark can pick the opening of an invocation out of a carved panel without knowing anything else about the script. There is a point about attribution worth making alongside it. Because the script travelled under a Tibetan name and is most often encountered in Tibetan contexts, the Newar community that developed and still uses it is frequently left out of the description entirely. Naming the script's home in the Kathmandu Valley is not a technicality; it is the difference between crediting a living tradition and treating its writing as an anonymous decorative style.