O and the Syllable at the Head of a Mantra

Ranjana is more widely seen than it is read, and the reason is the syllable that begins with this vowel. Om written in Ranjana appears on prayer wheels, on the carved stones of mani walls, over doorways, on book covers and in the borders of painted works, and it travelled with Tibetan Buddhism far beyond the Kathmandu Valley where the script belongs.

Under the name Lantsa the script became the standard ornamental hand for Sanskrit syllables in Tibetan settings, so a great deal of what a visitor sees as Tibetan decoration is in fact Newar writing. That is a fact about the script's reach and not an invitation to read the practice off the ornament. The syllables have a use in contemplative practice which is transmitted under initiation within living traditions, and describing that use is not the atlas's business; what is public is the writing, its history and its shapes. The letter o, and the mark for it written above the head stroke, is where a great deal of that writing starts. A reader who learns to recognise this one mark can pick the opening of an invocation out of a carved panel without knowing anything else about the script. There is a point about attribution worth making alongside it. Because the script travelled under a Tibetan name and is most often encountered in Tibetan contexts, the Newar community that developed and still uses it is frequently left out of the description entirely. Naming the script's home in the Kathmandu Valley is not a technicality; it is the difference between crediting a living tradition and treating its writing as an anonymous decorative style.