Sharada Letter La

It is the consonant la, with a built-in short a. In a Sharada word, 𑆬 starts with the l sound and normally adds a short a after it. A following vowel sign changes that vowel; a virama—a mark that cancels it—can leave the consonant without a vowel and help form a joined consonant cluster.

Proto-Sharada, a transitional form between late Brahmi (an earlier South Asian script) and Sharada, was used in Gandhara and Kashmir in the 6th–11th centuries. Inscriptions and coins show early Sharada forms in the 8th–10th centuries; the Bakhshali mathematical manuscript is the earliest known surviving Sharada manuscript, dated to the 12th century.

Sharada was used to write Kashmiri, Sanskrit, and other northern languages in stone and copper inscriptions, and in literary, religious, and administrative manuscripts. Its development is linked with Devāśeṣa and Takri, while Landa and Gurmukhi belong to related script traditions. In the 19th century, Persian and Devanagari displaced Sharada from much everyday writing, leaving it with a more specialized ritual and heritage role.