Au: The Ranjana Letter

Au is the fourteenth letter of the Ranjana varnamala and the last of the independent vowels, the open counterpart of o in the same way that ai is the open counterpart of e. The grammatical analysis derives it from a combining with the longer vowels of the labial group, which makes it the fuller of the pair, and in the classical pronunciation it is a long vowel of the back of the mouth, more open than o. Like the other three compound vowels it has no short partner. Its mark is written above the head stroke and is distinguished from the mark for o by shape; the independent letter shown here is used where the vowel begins a word.

With au the vowel section of the chart closes, and the consonants begin. That division is the largest structural break in the varnamala, and it is marked in every teaching of the order: the vowels are recited as one block and the consonants as another, and the two are counted separately, fourteen and thirty three in the series recorded here. Au is also the least common of the four compound vowels in ordinary Sanskrit text, appearing chiefly in derived forms and in the results of certain word junctions rather than in common roots. A scribe would draw its mark far less often than the mark for o. Its place at the close of the vowels is nonetheless fixed, because the order runs from the simple to the compound and within the compounds from the closer to the more open, and au is the last cell of that arrangement. Ranjana keeps the arrangement without alteration, as it keeps the rest.