Ssa and the Sounds That Rules Produce

A great deal of what a scribe of Sanskrit writes is not chosen but produced, by the rules that govern what happens when two words or two elements of a word meet. The retroflex sibilant is one of the letters those rules generate most often, appearing where a dental sibilant would otherwise stand, under conditions the grammatical tradition states precisely. This changes what learning to write the language involves. A scribe is not memorising the spelling of individual words so much as applying a system, and a text is correct when the system has been applied correctly rather than when each word matches a remembered form. It also explains why the phonetic order of the chart is practical rather than theoretical: a rule stated in terms of place and manner is only usable if the letters are arranged by place and manner, so the chart and the grammar were built to work together.

Ranjana inherits both, and a Newar scribe copying Sanskrit scripture in the Kathmandu Valley was working inside that system exactly as a scribe anywhere else in the Sanskrit world was. The same point explains why these scripts are learnt with a grammar rather than as a set of shapes. A reader who knows only the letters can copy; a reader who knows the rules can tell a correct text from a corrupt one, which is what a manuscript tradition needs.