Conjunct and Touching Letters
View(s):In the North and South Indian tradition of writing, two consonants without vowel modifiers are combined to form a single glyph which is known as a conjunct letter compound or simply a conjunct. When forming this conjunct, the consonant that precedes the second consonant has to be in the pure consonant form with a Halantor Virama or Hal Kirima (හල් කිරීම)in Sinhala. In the present tradition, conjunctletter compounds are written broken as two letters with the one preceding thesecond letter with a virama or Hal Kirima. For instance “KSHA” is written as “ක්ෂ”,not as the conjunct form “ක්ෂ”.
In the Ola books, the conjunct form had been the default form and before the independence, printed books adopted the conjunct form as the common form.
Subsequently, the conjunct form disappeared from new papers making the nonconjunct form the default form in the late sixties and seventies.
Pali is written using Sinhala script and as a tradition, halant or Hal Kirima is not used.
When two consonants are written without vowel modifiers either as conjunct form or as touching form is practiced. As mentioned before, the same rule that the consonant precedes the second consonant is made the pure consonant by attaching virama or Hal Kirima in the touching form as well. Some words can be written with three different forms namely as the present standard form written with two distinct letters with virama, or as a conjunct form and as a touching form.
As an example, “Buddha (බුද්ධ)” can be written as two other forms namely with the conjunct form of the last two letters or touching form. For instance, the last two letters of “බුද්ධ” virama or Hal Kirima can be written as “බුද්ධ” or “බුද්ධ”.
In certain conjunctions, two consonants form a totally different single glyph such as “DHA” and many of those glyphs have remained the most beautiful glyphs in the
Sinhala script.
For an example බුද්ධword can be written as බුද්ධby using the letter “ද්ධ” ද්විතීය, ද්වාර words can be written as ද්විතීය, ද්වාර by using the letter “ද්ව”.
-Harsha Wijayawardhana B.Sc., FBCS
COO & CTO of Theekshana R & D
In collaboration with LK Domain Registry