Tta and a Feature of a Whole Region

The retroflex row is a good illustration of how a script family carries information about geography as well as about language. Retroflex consonants are found across South Asia in languages that are not related to each other, and their presence in a writing system is one of the marks of the region. A Brahmic script taken far from its home therefore arrives with a row of letters that the local language may not need. Ranjana is a case in point twice over.

In the Kathmandu Valley it was used to write Sanskrit, which has the full retroflex series, and Nepal Bhasa, which is a Tibeto-Burman language with a different inventory; and in Tibetan use, under the name Lantsa, it was used for Sanskrit syllables in a language whose own script handles retroflexion by a separate device. The letters travel whether or not they are needed, because the chart is inherited as a unit. That is the same conservatism that keeps the vocalic liquids among the vowels, and it is why a Brahmic chart is a better guide to the tradition's analysis than to any single language's sound system. There is a second reason the letters travel. Sanskrit itself travelled, and a script used to write Sanskrit needs the full Sanskrit inventory wherever it goes. Ranjana's work in Tibetan settings was almost entirely Sanskrit work, so the retroflex row was needed there in a way it was not needed for the Valley's own vernacular.