Ra: The Letter That Changes Shape

Ra is the twenty-seventh consonant of the varnamala, the second of the four semivowels, and the partner of vocalic r among the vowels. It is the most mobile letter in written Devanagari and the one that most complicates reading a printed page. When it precedes another consonant in a cluster it is not written as a letter at all but as a small hook placed above the headline at the end of the whole cluster, so the sign for the sound appears well to the right of where the sound is pronounced. When it follows a consonant it appears instead as a stroke attached beneath that consonant, in one of two shapes depending on the letter it attaches to.

A reader therefore has to recognise the same consonant in three quite different forms, none of which resembles the independent letter shown on this page. That behaviour is a direct consequence of how Devanagari joins consonants. Because every consonant sign carries an inherent short a, a cluster has to be written as a single compound sign, and the letters that occur most often in clusters developed the most reduced and most distinctive combining forms. This one occurs in clusters constantly, which is why its combining forms are the furthest from its full shape.