The Band Below the Line

Most Indic vowel marks are written above the consonant sign or beside it. The two u vowels are the standing exception, and their marks hang beneath the letter, in a band of the writing space that the script otherwise uses only for conjuncts. That single decision has consequences that run through the whole family: a script that already writes something under the line has somewhere to put a subscript consonant, a nasalisation mark or a vowel canceller, and the scripts descended from Brahmi make heavy use of the room.

The independent letter is a separate matter and appears only where a word opens with the vowel. Words beginning with u are common enough in Sanskrit that the sign is well attested, and it is one of the vowels for which the earliest inscriptions supply plenty of examples. What the inscriptions do not supply is a consistent shape: the vowel mark is small, it is cut in a position where the stone is often damaged, and the difference between the short and the long form is a matter of a single added turn. Reading it correctly on a worn surface is one of the ordinary difficulties of the epigraphy, and it is a place where editions of the same inscription can differ from one another.