Ra: The Ranjana Letter

Ra is the twenty seventh consonant of the Ranjana varnamala and the second of the four semivowels, paired in the grammatical analysis with the vocalic r that stands among the vowels. It is the sound that behaves least predictably of the four across the Brahmic family, because a following or preceding r is very often written by a special mark or a reduced form rather than by the full letter, and the devices used differ from script to script. That variability is the exception to the family's usual consistency, and it exists because r combines with other consonants more freely than any other sound in Sanskrit, so the scripts developed shorthand for it. In Ranjana the full letter is written like any consonant, with the inherent short a and hanging from the head stroke, and it takes its vowel marks in the four available positions.

Where it enters a cluster the treatment follows the northern pattern of reduced and attached forms rather than the plain letter, which is one of the things a learner has to be shown rather than deduce. The letter also matters to the appearance of a page. Because r combines so freely, its reduced forms are among the commonest marks a reader sees, and a hand's treatment of them is one of the features by which one scribe's writing can be told from another's. In an ornamental script the same marks are among the places where the contrast between heavy and fine strokes is most visible.