Alphabet Letters
Ranjana Va
Ranjana Letters
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Origin In use from about the eleventh century CE, in the Kathmandu Valley among the Newar people of Nepal
Va is the twenty-ninth consonant of the Ranjana varnamala and the last of the semivowels, the consonantal counterpart of the vowel u. Its value falls between a v and a w and is described in the Indian tradition as a labiodental approximant; the two readings are both current in modern recitation. Confusion with ba in the manuscript hands of northern India is a known editorial problem, and the Newa Unicode block encodes this letter under the name wa rather than va, which is worth knowing when reading digital sources. No Unicode code point exists for any Ranjana letter, so the shape here is a vector outline lifted from an openly licensed Ranjana typeface; nothing in this entry is a Devanagari or Newa substitute.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodIn use from about the eleventh century CE, in the Kathmandu Valley among the Newar people of Nepal 2 Place of OriginThe Kathmandu Valley, among the Newar people of Nepal, in use from about the eleventh century CE 2Tradition: Newar manuscript culture Origin of the NameNamed by its own sound. Ranjana letter names are the sound itself, unlike the Greek and Semitic names, which are borrowed words. 2 Sense of the NameThe last of the semivowels, the consonantal counterpart of the vowel u; its value falls between v and w. 2 Identity
Script TypeConsonant sign of a Brahmi-derived abugida; it carries the inherent short a unless a dependent vowel sign is written 1Tradition: Brahmic writing PositionTwenty-ninth of the thirty-three consonants, closing the semivowels 2Tradition: The Ranjana varnamala Attributions
Associated SoundThe labial semivowel, between a v and a w; the consonantal counterpart of the vowel u 2Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceRanjana has no Unicode allocation; the Newa block U+11400 to U+1147F encodes Prachalit or Newar, a different script used for the same two languages 3Tradition: Digital text encoding Learn More
Va: The Ranjana Letter
Va is the twenty ninth consonant of the Ranjana varnamala and the last of the four semivowels, made at the lips and paired in the analysis with the vowel u. Its exact value in Sanskrit lies between the v and the w of English and is described differently in different regional traditions, which is one of the places where the classical description and later pronunciation diverge. The chart records the position rather than any one region's reading of it, which is why the letter can be used across a wide range of languages without the chart needing revision. In Ranjana it is written as any consonant, with the inherent short a and the head stroke, and it takes its vowel marks in the four positions.
With Va the semivowels are complete, and the chart turns to the three sibilants, which are of a different kind again: continuous sounds made with friction at a narrow point, none of which fits either the grid of stops or the group of semivowels. The pairing with u is also why the letter's reduced form beneath another consonant is common in Sanskrit, since clusters of a stop with a following labial semivowel occur frequently. A reader meets the joined shape early, as with ra and la, and the three together account for most of what a learner has to know about the lower half of a Ranjana syllable.
Va and the Sounds a Chart Cannot Fix
A writing system inherited with a phonetic description attached has a particular relationship with change. The description is fixed and the speaking is not, so over centuries the letters come to record what a sound was rather than what it is, and readers of different regions read the same letter differently without anyone regarding the chart as wrong. Va is a good example, since its value varies across the languages that use Brahmic scripts, and so is the aspirated labial, which in several modern languages has shifted towards a fricative. Ranjana carries the classical description because it carries the classical chart, and it was used chiefly for Sanskrit, where the description held.
When the same letters were turned to Nepal Bhasa, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Valley with a different sound system, the fit was necessarily looser, and it is at exactly that join that the unsettled questions about the script's inventory arise. What the chart states securely is the inherited series; what a particular community made of it in a particular century is a separate question and often a harder one. That is the ordinary condition of an inherited writing system rather than a defect in it, and it is the reason a chart is better read as a record of an analysis than as a guide to pronunciation in any given place.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
Ranjana Va continues the sign Brahmi Va 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.
Related To
Ranjana Va and Devanagari Va 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.
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