Pa: The Ranjana Letter

Pa opens the fifth and last row of the consonant grid, the labial class, made with the two lips together. The labials are the furthest forward of the five points of articulation, which is why they come last in an order that begins at the back of the throat and moves outwards. Pa is the plain voiceless member, the simplest cell of the row, and stands in the same relation to its four companions as Ka does in the first row and Ta in the fourth. With this row the twenty five stops are complete, and what follows in the chart is of a different kind: the semivowels, the sibilants and the aspirate, which are not stops and are listed after the grid rather than inside it. Ranjana writes Pa as any consonant sign, with the inherent short a, hanging from the head stroke and taking its vowel marks in the four positions.

The letter is common in Sanskrit and appears in a great many words of Buddhist vocabulary, so it is one of the shapes a scribe of the Valley would have drawn constantly. The row also closes the loop the chart opened. Having begun at the back of the throat with the velars, the description ends at the lips with nothing further forward to describe, so the labial row is the natural end of the grid rather than an arbitrary stopping point.