[INDOLOGY] Anusvara plus nasal

[Nagaraj Paturi]

1. In Telugu (probably in all Dravidian) inscriptions, anusvāra , a full
circle,  was a later borrowing from Northern Brahmi orthography.

2. There is ardha (half) anusvāra, a verticle half of a circle also in
classical Telugu orthography.  There is evidence to believe that this
script symbol was used to indicate nasalization of the preceding vowel.

There is evidence also to believe that the script symbol survived even
after the nasalization was lost in pronunciation by the preceding vowel.

3. The ardha (half) anusvara, the verticle half of a circle is a later
invention in the Telugu orthography. During early Telugu inscriptions, when
the ardha (half) anusvara, the verticle half of a circle was not invented
yet, full anusvāra, full circle itself was used in the place of ardha
anusvāra also. A full circle not followed by a glyph for a nasal indicated
the ardha (half) anusvara (nasalization of the preceding vowel) whereas a
full circle followed by a nasal indicated full anusvāra (nasal first part
of a cluster).

This is just to see if this provides any clue here.

Nagaraj



-- 
Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
Hyderabad-500044


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20140612/f125d6d5/attachment.htm>