[INDOLOGY] Re: deva+nagari

Tue Mar 30 13:20:14 UTC 2021

For what it's worth, the Lipiśālāsandarśanaparivarta of the Lalitavistara
mentions a Devalipi among the 64 lipis the Bodhisattva knew. Not clear to
me what script it refers to.

Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 6:06 AM Eltschinger, Vincent <
Vincent.Eltschinger at oeaw.ac.at> wrote:

> For what it’s worth, again, I remember my first teacher Jacques May
> warning us against the use of *devanāgarī*, which, according to him, was
> “a modern, sixteenth-century invention”. I do not know what his sources
> for this were, but knowing his (well founded) veneration towards his
> Parisian teachers, especially Louis Renou, Jean Filliozat and Paul Mus, it
> may well have been Filliozat’s remark in the second volume of *L’Inde
> classique*, p. 678: “…le terme de *nāgarī* qu’on remplace communément par
> celui de *devanāgarī*, “citadine des dieux”(?), bien que cette
> désignation ne se rencontre pas dans les textes et paraisse n’avoir été
> répandue que par des pandits et surtout des Européens depuis le XVIIe
> siècle.”
>
> With kind regards,
> Vincent
>
>
> Vincent Eltschinger, korrespondierendes Mitglied der OeAW
> Directeur d'études
> École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section des sciences religieuses
> Patios Saint-Jacques, 4-14 rue Ferrus - 75014 Paris
> vincent.eltschinger at ephe.sorbonne.fr
> 0033 1 56 61 17 34 / 0033 7 85 86 84 05
> ------------------------------
> *Von:* Matthew Kapstein <mkapstei at uchicago.edu>
> *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 30. März 2021 14:48:40
> *An:* Andrew Ollett; patrick mccartney
> *Cc:* Indology List
> *Betreff:* [INDOLOGY] Re: deva+nagari
>
> For what it's worth, the Tibetan regent Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, in his Cha
> tshad dpe ris of about 1687 (reproduced in "Handbook of Tibetan Iconometry"
> Brill 2012), lists five of the Indic scripts he gives there (nos. 9, 10,
> 11, 12 on plates  257-8 and 14 on 264) as NAgari, but with no "deva."  In
> his Tibetan gloss on the term, he simply calls it "town writing" (grong
> khyer gyi yi ge). Hodgson, in his 1828 "Notices of the Languages,
> Literature, and Religion of the Bauddhas...." reproduces a Tibetan
> manuscript, the model for which I estimate to date to ca. 1700, that
> similarly uses just NAgari, though Hodgson in his English descriptions
> gives Deva-n... , no doubt reflecting what was by that time accepted usage
> among European Indologists. (Our colleague Dragomir Dimitrov also examines
> these and related materials in his recent, excellent monograph The Buddhist
> Indus Scripts and Scriptures [Harrassowitz 2020], although I do not believe
> the question of deva+ is among those that occupy him there.)
>
>
> Matthew
>
> Matthew Kapstein
> Directeur d'études, émérite
> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
>
> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
> The University of Chicago
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Andrew Ollett <andrew.ollett at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 30, 2021 7:08 AM
> *To:* patrick mccartney <psdmccartney at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* Indology List <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Subject:* [INDOLOGY] Re: deva+nagari
>
> Dear Patrick,
>
> I too was wondering about this a while back, and received the following
> two references from Professor Oskar von Hinüber, which I pass on to the
> list because they may be of more general interest:
>
> J. F. Blumhardt: Catalogue of the Gujarati and Rajasthani Manuscripts in
> the India Office Library. London1954, S.6 on the name devanagari. (
> https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001173373)
>
> Walter H. Maurer: On the name devanāgarī , JAOS 96.1976, S. 101-104 (
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/599893)
>
>
> From these it appears that the earliest attestation of the name is in
> 1731, when La Croze
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturin_Veyssi%C3%A8re_La_Croze> mentioned
> "Devanagari" as an alternative to "Nagari" in a letter to Theophilus Bayer,
> where he describes it as "the character used by Bramans," in contrast to
> Balabande (Balabodha), "the character used by the Marathas." (This is
> presumably printed in La Croze's correspondence, *Thesaurus Epistolicus
> Lacrozianus*, but I haven't tracked it down there. Blumhardt has a very
> brief reference on p. 6.) This is older than the reference Maurer gives,
> viz. to Halhed's *Code of Gentoo Laws* in 1776. La Croze must have based
> his information on books or manuscripts in Berlin.
>
> I have not so far seen any explanation of the name, or any sources (Indian
> or European) prior to 1731 where it is used.
>
> Andrew
>
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 12:45 AM patrick mccartney <psdmccartney at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> Might anyone be able to pinpoint the general/specific period/text when the
> nāgarī lipi is divinised and qualified as devanāgarī?
>
> The dates of 1st to 4th c. CE for its development and standard usage by
> the 7th c., with the modern lipi emerging in the 10th c. are reasonably
> clear. Though, I find it difficult to pinpoint more accurately when the
> lipi becomes a deva.
>
> Are there any discussions of this in primary texts? Some sort of
> orthographic argument? If you catch my sense.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> All the best,
>
> パトリック マッカートニー
> Patrick McCartney, PhD
> Research Affiliate - Organization for Identity and Cultural Development
> (OICD), Kyoto
> Research Associate - Nanzan University Anthropological Institute, Nagoya,
> Japan
> Visiting Fellow - South and South-east Asian Studies Department, Australian
> National University
> Member - South Asia Research Institute (SARI), Australian National
> University
>
> Skype / Zoom - psdmccartney
> Phone + Whatsapp + Line:  +61410644259
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>
> *bodhapūrvam calema* ;-)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    -
>
>
>
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>
>
>
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