Rare in the Word, Fixed in the Order

Voiced aspirated velars are not common in the inherited vocabulary. A stretch of Sanskrit or Prakrit can run a long way without needing this letter, and inscriptions of moderate length frequently do not carry it at all, so it is among the signs of which a palaeographer has relatively few dated examples to work from. Its position in the order is nevertheless fixed and never varies: fourth in the velar class, after the voiced unaspirated stop and before the nasal that closes the group.

That is the general principle the Brahmi order runs on and it is worth naming plainly. Position is determined by the analysis, not by frequency, so the table has cells that the language fills heavily and cells it barely fills at all, and both are taught in the same sequence. A learner meets the letter as the fourth member of the first class long before meeting a word that uses it. Because the sequence was recited before it was written out as a list, and because recitation preserves an order regardless of what the order contains, the letter has been carried unchanged through two thousand years and into every script descended from Brahmi, including scripts used for languages with no voiced aspirates at all.