RA + RI = ?

[James E. Agenbroad]

                                                 Thursday, April 27, 2000
I assume that Hester Lambert's Introduction to Devanagari (page 24) is
correct that the RA consonant followed by the RI vowel sound is written as
the stand-alone form of the vowel with a reph above it rather than as RA
with the RI matra/vowel sign.  Are there any other similar cases where a
matra is replaced by a stand-alone vowel? Is this mentioned in other
books, preferably ones with Indian authors? I am not an indologist, just a
librarian/systems analyst who hopes to persuade the authors of the Unicode
standard that their RA + halant + the stand-alone RI vowel is a less
plausible way to encode what appears as "RI with reph".  I know this
combination is uncommon--it's not mentioned in ISCII, the Indian standard
for assgining computer codes to Indian scripts--maybe because it's too
obvious to Indians?  If I'm wrong let me know that too.
Thank you,

     Regards,
          Jim Agenbroad ( jage at LOC.gov )
     The above are purely personal opinions, not necessarily the official
views of any government or any agency of any.
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