Vocalic Ll: The Ranjana Letter

Vocalic ll is the tenth letter of the Ranjana varnamala and the least attested of them all. It is the long counterpart of vocalic l, a syllabic l held for the duration of a long vowel, and it is not securely attested in any Sanskrit word at all. It appears in the grammatical tradition as the completion of a pattern, since a vowel classed as short implies a long partner, and it appears on the alphabet chart for the same reason.

Every Brahmic script that teaches the full varnamala draws it, and Ranjana is no exception. As with the other vowels there is an independent form, shown here, for the head of a word, and in principle an attached mark for the position after a consonant, although the occasion for writing that mark does not arise in ordinary text. It is the clearest single instance of a letter that exists to satisfy a system. Recording it in an atlas rather than passing over it is deliberate: a reader who counts the vowels of a Brahmic script and finds fourteen where they expected six is being told something true about how the tradition thought, and that is worth more than a tidier chart would be. The letter also marks a boundary in the series. After it the chart turns to the compound vowels, which are of a different kind again, so vocalic ll is the last of the simple and liquid vowels and the point at which one principle of ordering gives way to another. Its position is therefore load bearing even though its use is not.