R̥ (Indic)

R̥ (also transliterated Ṛ) is a letter symbol of Indic abugidas. In modern Indic (Brahmic) scripts, R̥ is derived from the early (Ashokan) Brahmi letter after having gone through the Gupta letter . It is used only in Sanskrit language and in direct (unmodified) loanwords from Sanskrit which constitute the so called tatsama vocabulary of the modern Indic languages written by Brahmic scripts. (The sign is not used in Pali) The symbol represents what in Sanskrit was a syllabic r-sound, same as in words like krk in some Slavic languages (Czech, Croatian, Serbian and Slovak). This vocalic r has the function of a vowel in Sanskrit grammar. In modern Indic languages, this letter is pronounced by adding a vowel sound after the r, yielding /ri/ in Northern South Asia, and /ru/ (Marathi, Odia, and the Dravidian languages of South India). English adopts the Northern Indic pronunciation into its spellings of Sanskrit loanwords (e.g. Krishna).

As with all vowels in Brahmic scripts, there are two signs to represent this single phoneme: 1) a stand-alone, independent letter (used when R̥ does not immediately follow a consonant), and 2) a vowel sign for modifying a base consonant letter. (Bare base consonants without a modifying vowel sign represent a consonant followed by an inherent "A" vowel). Both of the signs are transliterated as R̥ in the ISO 15919 romanization standard for Indic languages, and as Ṛ in IAST. The latter is commonly used in texts where no confusion with an identically transliterated Hindi consonant can arise (i.e. those where only Sanskrit occurs).