[INDOLOGY] Northern and southern Devanagari

[Tyler Williams]

Hi Jacob,

Thank you for sharing this-- I imagine that there must be more instances of
this in the region that the chart is from. Will keep an eye out for such in
the future.

I also suspect that, in the case of manuscripts from the 'Hindi heartland',
Kaithi characters appear in Devanagari manuscripts more often than one
might assume. I've seen isolated Kaithi characters appear in Devanagari
manuscripts in such a way that I hardly noticed them at first. Some of the
graphemes of 'mercantile' scripts are so close to their Devanagari
counterparts that the distinction is hardly noticeable.

Best,
Tyler



On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 4:52 AM, <jacob at fabularasa.dk> wrote:

> Hi Martin and Tyler,
>
> Here's a detail from a snakes-and-ladders chart dated samvat 1818 (though
> I suspect it may be perhaps even a good deal later). It may not be exactly
> what you are looking for, but it does an interesting job of combinining
> devanagari and Gujarati script. The 'k's and 'l's are clearly Gujarati
> script, while the 'd's and the connecting line at the top is clearly
> devanagari. I guess it might just be a regional adoption of Gujarati
> graphemes into a predominantly devanagari-writing area, but I have only
> seen very few examples of it elsewhere.
>
> Best,
> Jacob
>
> Tyler Williams via INDOLOGY skrev den 2017-10-23 18:58:
>
>> Dear Martin,
>>
>> It's a very interesting question. Vernacular manuscripts from the
>> Gangetic plain, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, from the late sixteenth
>> through the eighteenth centuries, also exhibit inconsistencies in the
>> use of graphemes like these (more so in the latter two regions). In
>> those cases, I've wondered if it was due to itinerant scribes (known
>> to work in the region) with little familiarity or investment in the
>> texts, but in the end I don't think this sufficiently explains the
>> phenomenon. I have not been able to discern any consistent
>> orthographic logic in the instances that I have seen. Am curious to
>> hear what others have to say.
>>
>> Best,
>> Tyler
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 10:15 PM, Martin Gansten via INDOLOGY
>> <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>
>> Apologies for what is perhaps a very basic question:
>>>
>>> I have always unreflectingly accepted the common distinction between
>>> northern ('Calcutta-style') and southern ('Bombay-style')
>>> Devanagari. Recently, though, I noticed that some manuscripts mix
>>> the two -- for instance, using a 'northern' _ṇa _but a 'southern'
>>> _a_, or even alternating between the two kinds of _ṇa _(in the
>>> same copyist's hand). Is there any special significance to this --
>>> for example, particular regions and/or historical periods in which
>>> the two styles were less distinct? Or should it just be seen as a
>>> personal quirk of the scribe (perhaps an itinerant one)?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for any light on this,
>>> Martin Gansten
>>>
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