Sanskrit Syntax Sangha

[Richard P. Hayes]

Status: RO

SANSKRIT SYNTAX DISCUSSANTS:
 
This message has the dual purpose of a) seeing whether I have
correctly recorded the addresses of those who wish to participate in
the discussions on Sanskrit syntax, and b) making a proposal about
standardizing the way we send Sanskrit by e-mail.
 
Sending diacrtically marked romanized Sanskrit by e-mail is
difficult, and sending devanagari is (as far as I know) impossible.
May I suggest that for the purposes of these discussions we adopt
the set of  conventions being used on the Indological Forum
(Indology at liverpool.ac.uk).
 
These conventions are in fact the commands used to print Devanagari
in the fonts designed by Frans Velthuis for TeX typesetting
software. I find them simple and intuitive.
 
Velthuis's conventions are as follows:
 
1) LONG VOWELS ARE DOUBLED. (This also happens to be phonetically
correct.)
 
	The vowels of Sanskrit, then, are a, aa, i, ii, u ,uu etc.
 
2) CONSONANTAL DIACRITICS PRECEDE THE CONSONANTS MARKED BY THEM.
 
	Thus the retroflex class of vowels and consonants is written:
		.r .t .th .d .dh .n .s
 
	Visarga is written: .h
 
	The palatals that take diacritics are:
		~n and "s
 
	The guttural nasal is written: "n
 
 
3) DA.N.DA IS WRITTEN |
 
Since quotation mark (") has been appropriated as a diacritic, one
can use doubled open and close quote marks to indicate quotation:
``This is within quotation marks.''
 
Since all of us can distinguish Sanskrit from English and can
probably make a good guess at distinguishing between words that are
being used and words that are being mentioned, I propose that we
minimize the use of quotation marks. That is, instead of writing:
 
	The word ``"sabda'' means word.
 
one could just as well write:
 
	The word "sabda means word.
 
To give you some idea of what Sanskrit looks like when these
conventions are followed, here is the opening paragraph of the
"saalistambasuutram (a mahaayaana suutra)
 
eva.m mayaa "srutam| ekasmin samaye bhagavaan raajag.rhe viharati
sma g.rdhrakuu.te parvate mahataa bhik.susa"nghena
saardhamardhatrayoda"sabhirbhik.susahasrai.h sa.mbahulai"s ca
bodhisattvamahaasattvai.h| athaayu.smaan "saariputro yena
maitreyasya bodhisattvasya mahaasattvasya
ca.mkramas tenopasamakramiit|
 
 
Like any new set of conventions, these may seem a bit awkward at
first, but I have found it easy to adapt.
 
If any of you have principled (or even unprincipled) preferences for
some other set of conventions, please state them fo us to consider.
 
Richard Hayes <cxev at musica.mcgill.ca>
Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University