Ba: The Ranjana Letter

Ba is the third cell of the labial row, the plain voiced labial, made with the lips closed and the vocal folds vibrating. It stands to Pa exactly as Ga stands to Ka, Ja to Ca, Dda to Tta and Da to Ta, which is the fifth and last instance of a pattern the chart has now demonstrated in full. Sanskrit uses the letter widely.

In Ranjana it is written as every consonant sign is written, carrying the inherent short a, hanging from the head stroke, taking its vowel marks in the four positions the script uses and joining with a following consonant into a stacked form where no vowel comes between them. Its place in the order can be found by counting rows and columns from any other stop, which is the practical test of whether a chart of this kind has been understood: not whether the shapes can be recalled, but whether the position of a sound can be worked out from the scheme itself. Ba is also a letter whose distinction from the labial semivowel later blurred in some regional traditions, which is a reminder that a chart records the analysis of the classical language and not the pronunciation of every place and period that used the script. That gap between the chart and the mouth is normal rather than a fault. A writing system inherited with a grammatical description attached keeps the description fixed while the speaking changes around it, which is why the same letters can serve languages and centuries that would not have understood one another.