Ahom Letter Nna

It writes retroflex ṇ in Pāḷi. Retroflex means curling the tongue tip back slightly. The letter was added for an Ahom-script edition of the Tipiṭaka, a collection of Buddhist texts. The wider Tai writing tradition, Lik Tai, is recorded in 1396; a dated example survives from 1407. Its earliest surviving Ahom evidence includes sixteenth-century inscriptions and coins; the script is linked to the older writing traditions of Old Mon and Old Burmese. Ahom priests kept it for religious use into the nineteenth century; twentieth-century revival publishing brought it back into use.