Conjunct consonants are a form of orthographic ligature characteristic of the Brahmic scripts. They are constructed of more than two consonant letters. Biconsonantal conjuncts are common, but longer conjuncts are increasingly constrained by the languages' phonologies and the actual number of conjuncts observed drops sharply. Ulrich Stiehl includes a five-letter Devanagari conjunct र्त्स्न्य (rtsny)[1] among the top 360 most frequent conjuncts found in Classical Sanskrit;[2] the complete list appears below. Another five-letter conjunct, ङ्क्ष्ण्व (ṅkṣṇv) is possible.[3] Conjuncts often span a syllable boundary, and many of the conjuncts below occur only in the middle of words, where the coda consonants of one syllable are conjoined with the onset consonants of the following syllable.
Biconsonantal conjuncts
The table below shows all 1296 combinations of two Sanskrit letters. The table is formed by collating the 36 consonants of Sanskrit plus ळ (which is not used in Sanskrit), as listed in Masica (1991:161–162). Not all of these form conjuncts (these instead show a halanta under the first letter), and the number that do will vary with the Devanagari font installed. There is variation in the conjuncts that are in use for any given language. Some of the combinations below that do not form conjuncts may not be viable combinations in any language.
The romanization (in ISO 15919[4]) and IPA of each conjunct will appear with mouseover.
Ten of the ligatures for biconsonantal conjuncts are irregular; their construction is not obvious based on how Devanagari ligatures are usually formed.[5] In Hindi, they are not especially widespread, but do appear in several common terms of Sanskrit origin, such as श्री (śrī) and क्षत्रिय (kṣatríya). The ten irregular ligatures are as follow:
^When the "mordaceous" meaning adjective दङ्क्ष्णु (daṅkṣṇu) becomes दङ्क्ष्ण्वोः (daṅkṣṇvoḥ) if inflected through Dual Masculine/Feminine Genitive & Locative cases. A close example is found in śloka 15, chapter 15 of Vājasaneyi-saṃhitā, from Śukla Yajurveda. पुञ्जिकस्थला च क्रतुस्थला चाप्सरसौ दङ्क्ष्णवः पशवो हेतिः पौरुषेयो वधः प्रहेतिस्तेभ्यो नमो अस्तु ते नोऽवन्तु ते नो मृडयन्तु ते यं द्विष्मो यश्च नो द्वेष्टि तमेषां जम्भे दध्मः puñjikasthalā ca kratusthalā cāpsarasau daṅkṣṇavaḥ paśavo hetiḥ pauruṣeyo vadhaḥ prahetistebhyo namo astu te no'vantu te no mṛḍayantu te yaṃ dviṣmo yaśca no dveṣṭi tameṣāṃ jambhe dadhmaḥ
^The romanization shown is identical to IAST, except that ळ has the ISO value ḷ, whereas IAST duplicates l for it.