Ṛ (Indic)

Ṛ
Example glyphs
Bengali
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)

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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

Kharoṣṭhī Ṛ[]

The Kharoṣṭhī letter Ṛ is indicated with the vowel mark . As an independent vowel, Ṛ is indicated by adding the vowel marks to the independent vowel letter A .

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