On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 3:50 AM, Stephan Stiller <[email protected]> wrote: > I have been told that Devanagari contains letters (or a letter) that were > invented merely to complete the rectangular C-V table; not sure to what > extent they (or it) were used subsequently.
In which reference is this mentioned? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari > tells me about the letter ॡ (signifying "ḹ", I assume this means a syllabic > long "l"). Are there other examples? What about other Indic scripts? I have never heard of "letters" in the sense of individual graphemes invented purely to complete a table. The "letter" ॡ and its equivalents in other Indic scripts are (only) used in certain mantra-s but only as independent vowels and followed by an anusvara. Since the vowel is not part of the Sanskrit/other Indic *language* content, you would not see natural (in the sense of "can occur in words") syllables involving the vowel and syllables like कॣ खॣ गॣ etc would be purely artificial.
