Ca: The Ranjana Letter

Ca opens the second row of the consonant grid, the palatal class, and is its plain voiceless member. The palatals are made with the blade of the tongue against the hard palate, one step forward from the velars, and the order of the rows follows that forward movement exactly. In Sanskrit these consonants are affricates, closer to the ch of English church than to a plain t or k, and the row runs through the same four stop types before closing on its own nasal, as every row does. Ca is therefore the second row's anchor in the same way Ka is the first row's, and its name gives the class its name. Ranjana writes it as it writes every consonant, with the inherent short a already present, hanging from the head bar and taking its vowel marks around it. The palatal row also matters beyond itself, because Sanskrit grammar links it to the vowel i and to the semivowel ya, and states rules by which sounds of the velar row shift into it under stated conditions. The chart's rows are not isolated shelves but positions between which the language moves.

Ca is also the letter where the Indian analysis and the English alphabet diverge most visibly in transliteration, since the romanisation c stands here for a sound English writes with two letters and reserves c for something else entirely. Reading the position in the chart rather than the Latin letter is the surer route.