Ja: The Ranjana Letter

Ja is the third cell of the palatal row, the plain voiced member, standing to Ca as Ga stands to Ka. Its place is fixed by the same two dimensional scheme that fixes every stop in the grid: the row gives the point of articulation, here the hard palate, and the column gives the state of voice and breath, here voiced and unaspirated.

In Sanskrit it is a voiced affricate, close to the j of English judge. Ranjana writes it as it writes every consonant sign, carrying the inherent short a, hanging from the head bar and taking its vowel marks in the four positions the script uses. Ja is a common letter in Sanskrit and appears in a great many words of religious vocabulary, so a Newar scribe copying Buddhist scripture would have drawn it constantly. The regularity of the grid is what makes such a letter easy to place. A reader who knows the row and the column knows the sound before knowing the shape, and can check a doubtful reading against the position rather than against memory alone. The letter also carries a piece of the chart's internal logic. The palatal row is linked by rule to the vowel i and to the semivowel ya, and voiced palatal stops alternate with those sounds under stated conditions, so a reader who meets an unexpected j in a word can often account for it by the grammar rather than by the spelling.