Sha: The Ranjana Letter

Sha is the thirtieth consonant of the Ranjana varnamala and the first of the three sibilants, made at the hard palate, and it is close to the sh of English ship. The three sibilants are grouped after the semivowels because they share a manner rather than a place: each is made by forcing air through a narrow channel to produce continuous friction, and they differ from one another by where that channel is. Sha is palatal, the second is retroflex and the third is dental, so the three between them repeat three of the five stations the grid used, which is why the order runs as it does. Sanskrit uses this letter heavily and it appears in a great deal of religious vocabulary.

In Ranjana it is written as any consonant sign, carrying the inherent short a, hanging from the head bar, taking vowel marks in the four positions and entering joined forms with a following consonant where no vowel comes between them. The letter's frequency in religious vocabulary also makes it common in the material Ranjana chiefly carried, so it is among the shapes an outside reader is most likely to have seen on a cover, a lintel or a carved panel without being able to name it. In an ornamental hand a letter met that often becomes recognisable as a silhouette long before it is understood as a sound.