m/anusvAra & s/visarga

[D.H. Killingley]

May I make an adjustment to Dominique Thillaud's statement of the
distribution of Visarga and h in Sanskrit? It is a very simple
complementary distribution: h before a voiced sound (i.e. vowel or a
voiced consonants), visarga before a voiceless sound or silence (avasAne,
i.e. at the end of a sentence or at any other point where the sandhi is
broken). It is therefore quite possible to use the same character for both
without ambiguity; but if you want a computer to transcribe it into
Devanagari or standard romanization, you will have to tell the computer
which consonants are voiced and which are voiceless.

Dr Dermot Killingley
Dept of Religious Studies
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
Phone 0191 222 6730    Fax 0191 222 5185