[INDOLOGY] The alphabet found in the Lalitavistara

[Harry Spier]

Dear list members,
"A Primer in Grantha Characters" relating devanagari to grantha
characters has after h  what I think is  vedic l followed by kSa for
51 characters .

A chart I have relating  Sharada characters  to devanagari (I no
longer recall the source and I have no title page for it ) has   kSa
tra jJa SNa STa STha after h .(I'm using Kyoto-Harvard
transliteration).

Harry Spier

On 11/1/19, Richard G. Salomon via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> Many documents containing the "alphabet" in Devanagari and other scripts,
> ancient and modern, have kṣa, jña, and/or tra added in various combinations
> (one, two, or all three), at the end, after ha, because these are graphic
> ligatures, in the sense that they are (no longer) obviously combinations of
> their component graphs. The criteria are graphic, not phonetic (although
> coincidentally jña is phonetically distinct in most languages dialects from
> j-ñ). You can see some or all of these special graphs in various Indian
> primers for teaching reading to children.
>
> The position of the ligatures at the end of the "alphabet" is part of a
> general pattern in script history whereby "extra" characters get added –
> understandably – at the end of the standard sequence. This is why,
> for example, our alphabet has v-w-x-y-z at the end; these were not part of
> the character sets in the scripts from which "Latin" is developed, going
> back to the Phoenician (and ultimately even to proto-Canaanite) script,
> which ended with t.
>
> Rich Salomon
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:20 AM Martin Joachim Kümmel via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
>> Dear Madhav and colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> in NW Indo-Aryan, old *kṣ* developed into a new phoneme, a retroflex
>> affricate *ṭṣh*, and I have long been wondering if this might be one
>> factor relevant for the special status of this akṣara. Although lack of l
>> might also have been an originally NW feature, I am not sure this would
>> still be relevant at the time, and for the other peculiarities, I don’t
>> see
>> how they might be explained as NW.
>>
>>
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Joachim Kümmel
>>
>> Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Philosophische Fakultät
>>
>> Institut für Orientalistik, Indogermanistik, Ur-und Frühgeschichtliche
>> Archäologie
>>
>> Seminar für Indogermanistik
>>
>> Zwätzengasse 12, D-07743 Jena, Germany
>>
>> Tel. +49-(0)3641-9443-81 Fax -82 Sekretariat -80
>>
>> E-mail: martin-joachim.kuemmel at uni-jena.de
>>
>> Homepage: http://www.oriindufa.uni-jena.de/k%C3%BCmmel_martin.html
>>
>>
>>
>> *Von:* INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> *Im Auftrag von
>> *Madhav
>> Deshpande via INDOLOGY
>> *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 31. Oktober 2019 18:25
>> *An:* Indology <indology at list.indology.info>; Bharatiya Vidvat parishad <
>> bvparishat at googlegroups.com>
>> *Betreff:* [INDOLOGY] The alphabet found in the Lalitavistara
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>>      As I have been reading the Lipiśālāsandarśana-Parivarta of the
>> Lalitavistara [p. 89, P. L. Vaidya edition], some interesting features of
>> the alphabet popped up for me.  The Alphabet omits *r̥* and *l̥*, but
>> includes *ai, au*, and *aḥ*. Among the consonants, it adds *kṣ *at the
>> end after *h*.  The version of this passage as given in the
>> Bauddhāgamārthasaṅgraha [ed by P. L. Vaidya] also omits *l*, while it is
>> included in the version of Lalitavistara edited by Vaidya himself.  I
>> wonder if there are textual variants about this.  I don't know what this
>> alphabet represents.  The omission of *r̥ *and *l̥ *goes along the
>> phonologies of Prakrits, but the inclusion of *ai, au*, and *aḥ* goes in
>> the direction of Sanskrit.  The addition of *kṣ *and the possible
>> omission of *l *point to something else that I cannot figure out.  Any
>> suggestions and references are welcome.
>>
>>
>>
>> Madhav M. Deshpande
>>
>> Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
>>
>> University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
>>
>> Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
>>
>>
>>
>> [Residence: Campbell, California, USA]
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