Ma and the End of the Five Classes

Reaching the end of the fifth class is the natural pause in a recitation of the varnamala, and it is the point at which the chart's central claim has been fully set out. Twenty five letters have been produced from two dimensions and five stations in the mouth, arranged so that any of them can be located by counting rather than by memory. Nothing that follows in the chart is organised so tightly, because nothing that follows fits the scheme: a semivowel is not a stop, a sibilant is not a stop, and the aspirate at the end of the order is a class of one. The tradition acknowledges that by listing them separately rather than forcing them into cells.

For Ranjana this structure is what makes a letter by letter comparison with its relatives possible, and it is the basis on which the correspondences recorded in this atlas are stated: a Ranjana consonant and a Devanagari consonant occupy the same cell of the same inherited grid, and both continue the sign that Brahmi wrote in that cell, through the northern line of descent that runs from Brahmi through the Gupta and Siddhamatrka stages to the scripts of Nepal. The pause also marks a change in how much can be said with confidence. The grid is regular and its correspondences are secure; the letters after it are a more mixed group whose treatment varies more between scripts, so a reader should expect the remaining entries to carry more qualification than the twenty five just covered.