Zanabazar Square Letter Ca

It represents the consonant written ca in Tibetan transliteration. Zanabazar ca belongs to an abugida: a script where a consonant letter carries a built-in vowel unless another mark changes it. Here that vowel is “a”; attached vowel signs change it. In Tibetan and Sanskrit writing, a virama can cancel the built-in vowel. Mongolian uses a final-consonant mark that also signals a syllable boundary, so the surrounding marks affect how a sequence reads.

Zanabazar designed the script around 1686, drawing on Tibetan writing and an older Brahmi-inspired model. Its forms also share features with Phags-pa, a separate historical script. It was made for Mongolian, Tibetan, and Sanskrit. Its horizontal layout may have suited multilingual interlinear texts, where one language is written between another’s lines; the script likely predates Soyombo.