Ii: The Long Palatal Vowel

Long ii is the fourth letter of the varnamala and the partner of short i in the pattern of short and long that governs the opening of the series. Its articulation is the same, the tongue raised towards the hard palate, and it differs only in duration, held for two morae where the short vowel is held for one. Its vowel sign mirrors its partner's: where short i hooks over the consonant and drops to the left, long ii hooks over and drops to the right, and the pair is one of the first distinctions a learner has to fix, because the two signs are similar enough to confuse in handwriting and the difference they carry is not small.

The independent letter is used only where a word opens with the vowel. Long ii carries a large grammatical load. It forms a major class of feminine stems, which is why so many of the tradition's names for goddesses and for abstract qualities end in it, and it appears in the endings of several noun and verb classes. It also arises through sandhi wherever two i sounds meet at a word join, so a written or recited text shows it in places where the separated words had short vowels. Behind the Devanagari shape stands a Brahmi original, and the intervening forms are documented in the inscriptional record that Richard Salomon's guide to Indian epigraphy surveys.