I: The Ranjana Letter

I is the short palatal vowel, made with the front of the tongue raised towards the hard palate and the lips spread, and it is the third letter of the Ranjana order. Its place in the sequence follows the same logic that put a first. Having begun with the vowel of least effort, the series moves through the positions the tongue can take, and the palatal position is the next one described.

The classification matters beyond the vowel itself, because Sanskrit grammar treats i as the vowel that corresponds to the semivowel ya and to the whole palatal class of consonants, and states rules by which one alternates with another. A vowel is therefore not an isolated sound in this analysis but a member of a family that includes consonants. In writing, i has the property that most often catches out a reader coming from a Latin background: its mark is drawn before the consonant it follows. The sound comes after the consonant and the sign comes before it, so the scribe writes the mark and then the letter it belongs to, and the reader reverses the order when speaking. This is inherited from the wider Indian tradition rather than invented for Ranjana, and it is one of the reasons an abugida cannot be read as a simple left to right sequence of sounds.