Dogra Letter Ra

It is Dogra's consonant letter for r, with a built-in a.

Dogra is an abugida: a writing system where each consonant carries an unwritten vowel. A dependent vowel sign changes that vowel; a virama, a small mark, suppresses it. The signs attached to 𑠤 determine whether the syllable has its built-in vowel or the consonant stands without one.

Dogra writing for Dogri is documented in the 17th century. The Dogra script developed from Takri, whose hill scripts descended from Sharada. Older Takri writing lacked vowel signs needed for precise official orders, so New Dogra was standardized in the 1860s, adapting dependent vowel signs from Devanagari. A printed 1872 Dogri translation of a Sanskrit mathematics treatise used New Dogra. Dogra also appeared on Jammu State stamps, postcards, and currency. Contemporary Dogri is usually written in Devanagari; a 2026 report describes Dogra Akhar signboards returning in Jammu.

Why does 𑠤 look different?

Older and newer Dogra sources can draw it differently.

The Dogra proposal records an outline variant for Ra, and older versus newer sources can show different forms. A historical chart and a modern font may therefore give 𑠤 different outlines while referring to the same letter.

A missing display font causes a different problem: the character may appear as a box. A 2022 keyboard-support thread reported that one custom Dogra layout worked on a computer but did not display letters on Android; its suggested fix was to pair the layout with a Dogra-capable font.