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

[Harry Spier]

Thank you Dominik for the history and clarity. Can someone give me an
actual example of where in a document, or a publication the ISO-15919
standard has been used for Sanskrit?
Harry Spier


On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 9:41 AM Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> 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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