Alphabet Letters
Siddham La 𑖩
Siddham Letters
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Origin The Siddhamatrka hand from which Siddham takes its form grows out of the late Brahmi of the Gupta period and is current in Indian inscriptions and manuscripts from about the sixth century CE.
La is the third of the four semivowels of the Siddham syllabary, the dental liquid, paired by the phoneticians with the vocalic l that stands among the vowels. Sanskrit separates it firmly from ra, and a number of word pairs turn on nothing else, although the two sounds interchange in the older language and in the Prakrits often enough that etymologies cross between them. In the Siddham order it holds the third place among the semivowels, after ra and before va, and the block of four is recited as a unit in the traditional teaching of the table. In the East Asian teaching of the table the four semivowels were learned as a fixed block, and a learner who could recite them in order could place any one of them by ear.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodThe Siddhamatrka hand from which Siddham takes its form grows out of the late Brahmi of the Gupta period and is current in Indian inscriptions and manuscripts from about the sixth century CE. 3Tradition: Indian epigraphy Place of OriginNorthern India 3Tradition: Indian epigraphy Origin of the NameNamed by its own sound. Siddham letter names are the sound itself, as in the other Brahmic syllabaries, rather than borrowed words as in the Greek and Semitic alphabets. 1Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Sense of the Namethe l sound; third of the semivowels 4Tradition: The Siddham syllabary in its traditional order Identity
Script TypeConsonant sign of a Brahmi-derived abugida; it carries the inherent short a unless a dependent vowel sign is written 1 PositionForty-second letter of the Siddham order, third of the semivowels 1Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Attributions
Associated SoundDental lateral, paired by the phoneticians with the vocalic l 2Tradition: Sanskrit phonetics of the grammarians Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourcePreserved in East Asia after the script had ceased to be written in India, and studied in Japan as shittan, the discipline of Sanskrit letter study transmitted through Chinese Buddhist translation. 5Tradition: East Asian esoteric Buddhism Learn More
La: The Siddham Letter
La is the third of the four semivowels, the dental liquid, and the phoneticians pair it with the vocalic l that stands among the vowels. It holds the third place in the block, after ra and before va, and the four are recited together as a unit in the traditional teaching of the table.
Sanskrit separates it firmly from ra, and a number of word pairs turn on nothing else. The separation is nonetheless historically recent in part: the two interchange in the older language and in the Prakrits often enough that etymologies cross freely between them, and a root can appear with either liquid in different periods and regions.
The letter is common in the vocabulary and enters conjuncts freely, taking a reduced form beneath the consonant it follows. Like the other semivowels it also participates in the rules that convert a vowel to its consonantal counterpart across a word boundary.
In the East Asian material it has no separate liturgical role of the kind ra and va acquired, which is a reminder that the five seed syllables of the elements are a selection made for a purpose rather than a summary of the table. The letters chosen for that scheme were chosen; the others were not passed over for any fault.
Ra and La in the Older Language and the Prakrits
The relationship between the two liquids is one of the standard dialect markers of early Indo-Aryan. The Vedic language favours r where the later classical language and several of the Prakrits favour l, and the distribution differs by region, so a word appearing with one liquid in one text and the other elsewhere is usually evidence about where or when the text was made rather than about two separate words.
That matters for Buddhist material specifically, because the Buddhist literature was not composed in classical Sanskrit to begin with. It draws on the spoken languages of northern India, it was transmitted through several of them, and a good deal of it was later reworked into Sanskrit of varying degrees of regularity. Words carrying the marks of a Prakrit origin survive throughout, and the liquids are among the clearest of those marks.
A script cannot resolve any of this and does not try to. Siddham writes what a scribe put in front of it, and the letter that stands on the page is evidence about the exemplar rather than about the word as any grammarian would have wanted it. That is a general property of manuscript evidence and it is why an edition of a Buddhist text is a reconstruction of a transmission rather than of an original.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Shingon writes Sanskrit in Siddham and has done since the school was founded, keeping the script in use in Japan long after it had ceased to be written in India. The letters are studied as a set under the name shittan, and the contemplative practices attached to particular syllables are transmitted by initiation.
Tendai, the other Japanese school carrying an esoteric transmission, keeps the same letters in liturgical and inscriptional use. Siddham on a Japanese grave marker or a ritual implement may belong to either school, and the letters themselves are common to both.
Derived From
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.
Originates in Language
The letter is named by its own Sanskrit sound and holds the place the Sanskrit phoneticians gave that sound in their analysis. Siddham was made to write this language, and the East Asian schools that preserved the script preserved it as a way of writing Sanskrit rather than adapting it to a local tongue.
Related To
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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