[INDOLOGY] subscript dot diacritic

[Stefan Baums]

Dear Rich and Arlo,

> in Kharosthi script a line above indicates various
> kinds of variant pronunciations

Brough, Gāndhārī Dharmapada, pp. 59–60 has a detailed
discussion of this and does suggest that the line
originated from a dot. In the Kharoṣṭhī manuscript
material that I work with, sometimes a stray j or ṣ
with dot above occurs, even though the form with line
above is normal.

On a side note, wondering what the antecedents of dot
below for retroflex in Indic transliteration are, I
came across the following Wikipedia page:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_%28diacritic%29

with a wealth of examples for diacritic dots above
and below in Latin‐based orthographies.

All best,
Stefan

-- 
Dr. Stefan Baums
Institute for Indian and Tibetan Studies
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich