[INDOLOGY] Spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?

Tue May 15 16:19:48 UTC 2018

Dear McComas

As you might have gathered from the various replies, I’m afraid your student asked a question which cannot really be answered, at least not yet—South Asian codicology is still in its cradle. As already pointed out in this thread, blank spaces were used already in Asokan inscriptions. In my modest opinion, the question cannot be easily answered also because we always have to distinguish between scripts and local usages. Moreover, other strategies were employed in manuscripts to achieve the same objective, for instance in many more manuscripts than we might think the non-application of external sandhi is used to mark word boundaries. Also, the word dividers mentioned by Andrew are very widespread in all kind of Northern Indian manuscripts, above all of Gebrauchstexte and famous works which were read for teaching purposes. On the other hand, if I’m not wrong (my expertise in this field is very limited), South Indian scripts tend to have less punctuation and dividing marks than Northern Indian scripts.

You can get a good idea of such topics in the following book:

Einicke, Katrin. Korrektur, Differenzierung Und Abkürzung in Indischen Inschriften und Handschriften. Abhandlungen Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes ; Bd. 68. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009.

As to older manuscripts, I think this article is also very useful:

The Poetic and Prosodic Aspect of the Page. Forms and Graphic Artifices of Early Indic Buddhist Manuscripts in a Historical Perspective
Scherrer-Schaub, Cristina
DOI (Chapter): https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110543100-009

I hope this is helpful.

Best wishes,

Camillo

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From: Jonathan Silk [mailto:kauzeya at gmail.com]
Sent: 15 May 2018 09:28
To: Tieken, H.J.H. <H.J.H.Tieken at hum.leidenuniv.nl>
Cc: Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh at umich.edu>; McComas Taylor <McComas.Taylor at anu.edu.au>; indology <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?

Alluded to earlier is what happens in Aśoka's inscriptions, studied in detail by Klaus Ludwig Janert:  Abstände und Schlussvokalverzeichnungen in Aśoka-Inschriften, Wiesbaden, : F. Steiner, 1972 . Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland. Supplementband ; 10. Some of the VOHD is available online free, but apparently not this volume, as far as I see from a cursory search. This work was much reviewed, and has an English introduction, so even if you cannot read German it is not difficult to discover his main points.

Jonathan

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 8:15 AM, Tieken, H.J.H. via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
A few years ago I have edited and translated Tamil letters sent from Ceylon to Cape Town in South Africa between 1728-1737. It concerns private correspondence: mother (dictated to brother-in-law), brothers, in-laws writing to Nicolaas Ondaatje, who had been banished by the Dutch to the Cape. The letters do not show any trace of interspacing. The initial vowel of a word is attached to the final consonant of the preceding word (if that word happens to end with a consonant). The letters lack punctuation and there is no spacing between sentences. There is also no division into paragraphs; a new paragraph may simply start in the middle of the line. However, not infrequently the first letter of a new paragraph is larger than the others (influence from Dutch?).
Herman

Herman Tieken
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Van: INDOLOGY [indology-bounces at list.indology.info<mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info>] namens Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY [indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>]
Verzonden: dinsdag 15 mei 2018 6:43
Aan: McComas Taylor
CC: indology
Onderwerp: Re: [INDOLOGY] Spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?
Dear McComas,

     This must have happened gradually after the Sanskrit Pundits were exposed to English printing.  Even the early Sanskrit printed texts in the form of pothis did not separate words.  I have many such old printed materials.  I have attached a sample page.  If this practice continued into early printing, it is simply because the printing style was copying the writing style of the manuscripts.  I have photographs of a few texts that were hand written by the famous Pandit Vasudeva Shastri Abhyankar where I do not see gaps between the words.  Early pothis of Vedic texts printed by the Nirnaya Sagara Press also do not show any gaps between words.

Madhav Deshpande
Campbell, California

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 9:02 PM, McComas Taylor via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:

Dear colleagues

A student has asked me a questions I cannot answer:  'When did scribes begin to insert spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?'

Can any of you learned folk help us out?

Thanks in advance

McComas

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McComas Taylor, SFHEA
Associate Professor, Reader in Sanskrit
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University, Tel. + 61 2 6125 3179
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/mccomasanu/

Address: Baldessin Building 4.24, ANU, ACT 0200

Ask me about my new project:

'Translating the Viṣṇu Purāṇa'

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