Scripts

[kichenas at math.umn.edu]

Just a few *brief* remarks

1) The relation between scripts and major living Indian languages is a
fact to be acknowledged: Tamil has had its own specific script for
centuries, and the fact that ancient Tamil inscriptions can been found
written in a form of Asoka's Brahmi is irrelevant, as a perusal of the
scholarly editions of Tamil masterpieces would show. The same goes for
other languages. 

2) To S. Vidyasankar's, G. Huet's and others' judicious remarks, we may add
that in Tamil, spaces are often used not to separate words, but metrical
units (ciir). Alliterations, too, are much easier to appreciate when the
Tamil script is used. The fact that certain letters cannot occur in 
certain positions in Tamil grammar helps separate words. 

3) While mystical interpretations of scripts (in India or in Semitic or
other traditions) are very interesting, one must remember that the
association of Indian languages to their respective scripts is based on
historical or cultural reasons, and esoteric speculation forms only a
small part of these reasons. On the other hand such speculations do lead
to very popular metaphors that no indologist can afford to ignore: isn't
the script relevant in part to the epithet `praNava svarUpa vakra tu.mDam'
for GaNapati? Doesn't every indologist know why?  Besides, would anyone
seriously say that one can claim to know Tamil without knowing its script?
How many Sanskrit scholars are there, who cannot read one of the Indian
scripts used for Skt? 

4) The remarks from our French-speaking colleagues are quite 
interesting, if we compare them to the recent discussion on
the languages of India. Just as English is not  *universally* used
in the Indology community, Sanskrit is not the only scholarly
language in the country, and Hindi is not the lingua franca of the
subcontinent. In the same vein, I have also seen people suggesting that
scientists should adopt Latin as a common language...

In an interdisciplinary subject such as indology, consensus on
conventions may be difficult. It is important to keep the goal
in focus (as many contributors to this discussion have), namely
communication, not arbitrary uniformization.



			S. Kichenassamy
			School of Mathematics
			U. of Minnesota
			kichenas at math.umn.edu

Resume en francais:

1) Qu'on le veuille ou non, les langues vivantes indiennes ont chacune
leur ecriture propre, qui s'impose aux indianistes.

2) En complement aux remarques judicieuses de S. Vidyasankar, G. Huet, ...
on peut signaler que les espaces en Tamoul poetique separent non les mots,
mais les unites metriques. La structure poetique (versification, rimes,
assonances) est bien plus facile a comprendre si l'on utilise les
caracteres T. 

3) Il semble que le probleme des interpretations mystiques soit marginal
(dans ce debat-ci). L'ecriture associee a une langue s'impose avant tout
par des raisons historiques et culturelles, et l'indianisme est cense
*etudier* l'Inde telle qu'elle est. Les aspects esoteriques, ici comme
ailleurs, doivent prendre la place qu'ils ont de fait dans la litterature. 

4) Il est interessant de noter le parallele entre l'affirmation
que l'anglais doit etre *universellement* adopte par les
universitaires du monde entier et celle qui consiste a dire
que le Sanskrit est la seule langue qui donne acces a 
la culture indienne, ou que tous les Indiens devraient parler Hindi.

Il serait utile de promouvoir la *communication*, et de faire
en sorte que (en l'occurrence) les travaux de l'ecole francaise
soient mieux connus si necessaire, en soulignant, dans une
langue ou une autre, l'utilite et
l'actualite de la contribution de l'ecole indianiste francaise.


			SK