[INDOLOGY] Revision of ISO 15919 (transliteration of Indic scripts)

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Perhaps the way forward is in Dániel's phrase "permitted optional variant
of ISO15919".  If we had a few more permitted variants in ISO15919, maybe
we could all get on with our real work.

I may be wrong, but my earliest memory of the institutional promotion of
the under-*circle* for ऋ etc. in romanized Sanskrit was from the Library of
Congress in the context of 8-bit MARC cataloguing.  See here
<https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/sanskrit.pdf> for Sanskrit,
and ALA-LC romanization <https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html>
generally.

I don't think under-circle is specifically "European" in any measurable
sense.  As far as I know, underdot for anusvāra and vowels, i.e., IAST, has
been the most widespread convention at least since the nineteenth century.
See, e.g., the World Congress of Orientalists (Berlin 1881, Geneva, 1894)
that MW referred to in his introduction (1899: xxix-xxx). See also.,

Plunckett, G. T. (1895) “Tenth International Congress of Orientalists Held
at Geneva: Report of the Transliteration Committee,” Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society 879–892. Available at:
https://bahai-library.com/plunkett_transliteration_congress_orientalists.

Monier-Williams referred several times, in 1899, to what we today call IAST
as being "German".

I don't actually know who formalized IAST, but it does an excellent job of
recording what most indologists, publishers and journals actually do, in my
view.  Yes, it could do with cleaning up around the edges and a bit of
extension perhaps (remember CS, CSX, CSX+).  But so can all the other
standards, formal or informal.  As a workaday description of what almost
everyone does in practice, it's valuable.  I wish it were a formal
standard, or had been used by the authors of ISO15919; I think they were
listening to the library community, not research scholars and professors.

As for ISO standards becoming freely available, I doubt that that will
happen any time soon.  This is a scandalous situation, and it applies also
to national standards.  We taxpayers pay committees to work stuff out for
us, and then we have to buy the results at exorbitant prices.  Better
people than me have fought this battle and lost.

Best,
Dominik
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