Urdu,Hindi,and Sanskrit

[Vidhyanath Rao]

On Sun, 4 Feb 2001 16:39:04 -0000, Stephen Hodge
<s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK> wrote:

>Imagine what the level of religious understanding and knoweldge would
>be in India now of all the religious and philosophical classics if the
>British, for example, had outlawed devanagari and other traditional
>scripts in  favour of total romanization !


It depend on what other limitations on printing they put in place, would it
not? As long as they get printed, would the script make any difference?
On the other hand, if the British had systematically stopped Indians from
printing the classics (after all, there were laws restricting the ownership
of printing presses in Company days, if not during the Crown Raj; goverment
control of means of communication seems still remain close to the hearts of
bureaucrats and politicians), would the script staying Nagari made any
difference?

After all, all these classics had to be edited from manuscripts which were
in various scripts at different stages of their history. Those who used
printed works, I suspect, would have learnt a systematic romanization in
short order. Those who actually produce printed editions from manuscripts
will need speicalized training, just as they do now. And not having to
squint at the conjunct letters to make them out properly is payback enough.