Ṛ
Example glyphs
Bengali-Assamese
Tibetan	ཨྲྀ
Malayalam	ഋ
Sinhala	ඍ
Ashoka Brahmi
Devanagari
Cognates
Hebrew	ר
Greek	Ρ
Latin	R
Cyrillic	Р
Properties
Phonemic representation	/ɻ̩/
IAST transliteration	ṛ Ṛ
ISCII code point	DF (223)

Ṛ is a vowel symbol, or vocalic consonant, of Indic abugidas. In modern Indic scripts, Ṛ is derived from the early "Ashoka" Brahmi letter after having gone through the Gupta letter . As an Indic vowel, Ṛ comes in two normally distinct forms: 1) as an independent letter, and 2) as a vowel sign for modifying a base consonant. Bare consonants without a modifying vowel sign have the inherent "A" vowel.

Āryabhaṭa numeration

Aryabhata used Devanagari letters for numbers, very similar to the Greek numerals, even after the invention of Indian numerals. The sign ृ was used to modify a consonant's value ×10⁶, but the vowel letter ऋ did not have an inherent value by itself.^[1]

Historic Ṛ

There are three different general early historic scripts - Brahmi and its variants, Kharoṣṭhī, and Tocharian, the so-called slanting Brahmi. Ṛ was not found in early Brahmi, and only appears in some of the less geometric styles of later Brahmi writing, such as the Gupta . Like all Brahmic scripts, Tocharian Ṛ has an accompanying vowel mark for modifying a base consonant. In Kharoṣṭhī, the only independent vowel letter is for the inherent A. All other independent vowels, including Ṛ are indicated with vowel marks added to the letter A.

Brahmi Ṛ

The Brahmi letter Ṛ is probably derived from the Aramaic Resh , and is thus related to the modern Latin R and Greek Rho.^[2] Several identifiable styles of writing the Brahmi Ṛ can be found, most associated with a specific set of inscriptions from an artifact or diverse records from an historic period.^[3] As the earliest and most geometric style of Brahmi, the letters found on the Edicts of Ashoka and other records from around that time are normally the reference form for Brahmi letters, but Ṛ is not found in those texts, so it is usually cited with a back-formed geometric style character similar to "X".

Brahmi Ṛ historic forms

Ashoka (3rd-1st c. BCE)	Girnar (~150 BCE)	Kushana (~150-250 CE)	Gujarat (~250 CE)	Gupta (~350 CE)
No examples

Tocharian Ṛ

The Tocharian letter is derived from the Brahmi . Unlike some of the consonants, Tocharian vowels do not have a Fremdzeichen form.

Tocharian consonants with Ṛ vowel marks

Kr	Khr	Gr	Ghr	Cr	Chr	Jr	Jhr	Nyr	Ṭr	Ṭhr	Ḍr	Ḍhr	Ṇr
Tr	Thr	Dr	Dhr	Nr	Pr	Phr	Br	Bhr	Mr	Yr	Rr	Lr	Vr
Śr	Ṣr	Sr	Hr

Devanagari Ṛ

Devanagari independent Ṛ and Ṛ vowel sign.

Ṛ (ऋ) is a vowel of the Devanagari abugida. It ultimately arose from the Brahmi letter , after having gone through the Gupta letter . Letters that derive from it are the Gujarati letter ઋ, and the Modi letter 𑘆.

Bengali Ṛ

Bengali independent Ṛ and Ṛ vowel sign.

Ṛ (ঋ) is a vowel of the Bengali abugida. It is derived from the Siddhaṃ letter , and is marked by the lack of horizontal head line and less geometric shape than its Devanagari counterpart, ऋ.

Gujarati Ṛ

Gujarati independent Ṛ and Ṛ vowel sign.

Ṛ (ઋ) is a vowel of the Gujarati abugida. It is derived from the Devanagari Ṛ , and ultimately the Brahmi letter .

Telugu Ṛ

Telugu independent vowel and vowel sign Ṛ.

Ṛ (ఋ) is a vowel of the Telugu abugida. It ultimately arose from the Brahmi letter . It is closely related to the Kannada letter ಋ. Like in other Indic scripts, Telugu vowels have two forms: and independent letter for word and syllable-initial vowel sounds, and a vowel sign for changing the inherent "a" of Telugu consonant letters. Ṛ is a non-attaching vowel sign, and does not alter the underlying consonant or contextually shape itself in any way.

Telugu Ṛ vowel sign on క, ఖ, గ, ఘ & ఙ: Kṛ, Khṛ, Gṛ, Ghṛ and Ngṛ.

Malayalam Ṛ

Malayalam independent vowel and vowel sign Ṛ.

Ṛ (ഋ) is a vowel of the Malayalam abugida. It ultimately arose from the Brahmi letter , via the Grantha letter r. Like in other Indic scripts, Malayalam vowels have two forms: an independent letter for word and syllable-initial vowel sounds, and a vowel sign for changing the inherent "a" of consonant letters. Vowel signs in Malayalam usually sit adjacent to its base consonant - below, to the left, right, or both left and right, but are always pronounced after the consonant sound. Some vowel signs, such as Ṛ, can also form a ligature with some consonants, although this is much more common in old-style paḻaya lipi texts than in the modern reformed paḻaya lipi orthography.

Malayalam Ṛ vowel sign on ക, ഖ, ഗ, ഘ, & ങ: Kṛ, Khṛ, Gṛ, Ghṛ and Ngṛ in paḻaya lipi.

Odia Ṛ

Odia independent and vowel sign Ṛ

Ṛ (ଋ) is a vowel of the Odia abugida. It ultimately arose from the Brahmi letter , via the Siddhaṃ letter r. Like in other Indic scripts, Odia vowels have two forms: an independent letter for word and syllable-initial vowel sounds, and a vowel sign for changing the inherent "a" of consonant letters. Vowel signs in Odia usually sit adjacent to its base consonant - below, to the left, right, or both left and right, but are always pronounced after the consonant sound. No base consonants are altered in form when adding a vowel sign, and there are no consonant+vowel ligatures in Odia.

Comparison of Ṛ

The various Indic scripts are generally related to each other through adaptation and borrowing, and as such the glyphs for cognate letters, including Ṛ, are related as well.

Comparison of Ṛ in different scripts

Aramaic Kharoṣṭhī 𐨃 Ashoka Brahmi Kushana Brahmi[lower-alpha 1] Tocharian[lower-alpha 2] - Gupta Brahmi Pallava - Kadamba - Bhaiksuki 𑰆 Siddhaṃ Grantha 𑌋 Cham - Sinhala ඍ Pyu / Old Mon[lower-alpha 3] - Tibetan ཨྲྀ Newa 𑐆 Ahom - Malayalam ഋ Telugu ఋ Burmese ၒ Lepcha - Ranjana Saurashtra ꢈ Dives Akuru - Kannada ಋ Kayah Li - Limbu - Soyombo[lower-alpha 4] - Khmer ឫ Tamil - Chakma - Tai Tham - Meitei Mayek - Gaudi - Thai - Lao - Tai Le - Marchen - Tirhuta 𑒇 New Tai Lue - Tai Viet - Aksara Kawi - 'Phags-pa - Odia ଋ Sharada 𑆉 Rejang - Batak - Buginese - Zanabazar Square - Bengali-Assamese Takri - Javanese ꦉ Balinese ᬋ Makasar - Hangul[lower-alpha 5] - Northern Nagari - Dogri 𑠱 Laṇḍā - Sundanese ᮻ Baybayin - Modi 𑘆 Gujarati ઋ Khojki - Khudabadi - Mahajani - Tagbanwa - Devanagari Nandinagari 𑦦 Kaithi - Gurmukhi - Multani - Buhid - Canadian Syllabics[lower-alpha 6] - Soyombo[lower-alpha 7] - Sylheti Nagari - Gunjala Gondi - Masaram Gondi[lower-alpha 8] 𑴶 Hanuno'o - Notes ↑ The middle "Kushana" form of Brahmi is a later style that emerged as Brahmi scripts were beginning to proliferate. Gupta Brahmi was definitely a stylistic descendant from Kushana, but other Brahmi-derived scripts may have descended from earlier forms. ↑ Tocharian is probably derived from the middle period "Kushana" form of Brahmi, although artifacts from that time are not plentiful enough to establish a definite succession. ↑ Pyu and Old Mon are probably the precursors of the Burmese script, and may be derived from either the Pallava or Kadamba script ↑ May also be derived from Devangari (see bottom left of table) ↑ The Origin of Hangul from 'Phags-pa is one of limited influence, inspiring at most a few basic letter shapes. Hangul does not function as an Indic abugida. ↑ Although the basic letter forms of the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics were derived from handwritten Devanagari letters, this abugida indicates vowel sounds by rotations of the letter form, rather than the use of vowel diacritics as is standard in Indic abugidas. ↑ May also be derived from Ranjana (see above) ↑ Masaram Gondi acts as an Indic abugida, but its letterforms were not derived from any single precursor script.

Character encodings of Ṛ

Most Indic scripts are encoded in the Unicode Standard, and as such the letter Ṛ in those scripts can be represented in plain text with unique codepoint. Ṛ from several modern-use scripts can also be found in legacy encodings, such as ISCII.

Character information

Preview					ఋ		ଋ		ಋ		ഋ		ઋ
Unicode name	DEVANAGARI LETTER VOCALIC R		BENGALI LETTER VOCALIC R		TELUGU LETTER VOCALIC R		ORIYA LETTER VOCALIC R		KANNADA LETTER VOCALIC R		MALAYALAM LETTER VOCALIC R		GUJARATI LETTER VOCALIC R
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	2315	U+090B	2443	U+098B	3083	U+0C0B	2827	U+0B0B	3211	U+0C8B	3339	U+0D0B	2699	U+0A8B
UTF-8	224 164 139	E0 A4 8B	224 166 139	E0 A6 8B	224 176 139	E0 B0 8B	224 172 139	E0 AC 8B	224 178 139	E0 B2 8B	224 180 139	E0 B4 8B	224 170 139	E0 AA 8B
Numeric character reference	ऋ	ऋ	ঋ	ঋ	ఋ	ఋ	ଋ	ଋ	ಋ	ಋ	ഋ	ഋ	ઋ	ઋ
ISCII	223	DF	223	DF	223	DF	223	DF	223	DF	223	DF	223	DF

Character information

Preview	Ashoka Kushana Gupta				𑌋
Unicode name	BRAHMI LETTER VOCALIC R		SIDDHAM LETTER VOCALIC R		GRANTHA LETTER VOCALIC R
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	69643	U+1100B	71046	U+11586	70411	U+1130B
UTF-8	240 145 128 139	F0 91 80 8B	240 145 150 134	F0 91 96 86	240 145 140 139	F0 91 8C 8B
UTF-16	55300 56331	D804 DC0B	55301 56710	D805 DD86	55300 57099	D804 DF0B
Numeric character reference	𑀋	𑀋	𑖆	𑖆	𑌋	𑌋

References