[INDOLOGY] Fwd: ळ in south Indian grantha sanskrit manuscripts

Fri Mar 24 14:54:40 UTC 2023

Dear Satyanad,

indeed, as you point out, the IAST transliteration for Sanskrit and the standard Tamil transliteration are not really compatible, e/ē and o/ō being another case in point. Some Tamil transliteration schemes solve the problem by transliterating long e and o as e/o (as in IAST) and short e and o as ĕ/ŏ, but of course that is completely illogical from the perspective of the Tamil language. ISO 15919 has the big advantage of being compatible with all Indic script and languages, but given that IAST has long been accepted as the standard for Sanskrit transliteration, I doubt whether Sanskritists would be willing to adopt a different transliteration scheme.

Best wishes,
Jonas

                                                           ____                _____
Dr. Jonas Buchholz
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Project “Hindu Temple Legends in South India”

Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstr. 2 | Building 4400 | Room 004
69115 Heidelberg, Germany

P:  +49 (0)6221 54 4095
E:  jonas.buchholz at hadw-bw.de<mailto:jonas.buchholz at hadw-bw.de>
W: https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> On Behalf Of Satyanad Kichenassamy
Sent: Freitag, 24. März 2023 14:46
To: Harry Spier <vasishtha.spier at gmail.com>; indology at list.indology.info
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Fwd: ळ in south Indian grantha sanskrit manuscripts

That's one more reason to revise IAST since the letter you mention (ḻ) is the now standard transliteration for another letter, the Tamil ழ் namely, the final letter of Tamiḻ.

The French used to have a different system that mixes lower and upper-case characters, but this system does not seem to be very popular anymore.

IAST, as its name indicates, is adapted to Sanskrit only. Another familiar issue is fact that e and o indicate long letters in IAST and short ones in Tamil, and in other languages that have these short letters.

From a practical viewpoint, it would be nice to have versions in GRETIL and other repositories that are more inclusive, at least Tamil-compatible, since manuscripts containing Tamil and Sanskrit text together are plenty. S'aivism is an obvious example. For mathematics, especially in the Madhava school that produced extremely interesting results from the fourteenth century onwards, Malayalam and Sanskrit may be used concurrently, so that the same issue arises.

One should remember that in India, texts in several languages are very common, and that the problem was solved by having a different script for each language. Transliteration in such cases fails to reproduce an essential element of manuscripts. I remember a music composition that used four scripts.

We Indologists needs to be as inclusive as possible for obvious reasons.

Satyanad Kichenassamy

Le 24/03/2023 à 14:18, Harry Spier a écrit :
Looking at this page of wikipedia  IAST uses l underbar for retroflex l.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Alphabet_of_Sanskrit_Transliteration#Comparison_with_ISO_15919
Harry Spier

On Fri, Mar 24, 2023 at 6:32 AM Satyanad Kichenassamy <satyanad.kichenassamy at univ-reims.fr<mailto:satyanad.kichenassamy at univ-reims.fr>> wrote:

Dear Jonas (if I may),

IAST, as you say, is not satisfactory. ISO 15919 is better in this regard, as it distinguishes ḷ and l̥. IPA uses l̩<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant> for ऌ.

Best regards,

             Satyanad Kichenassamy
Le 24/03/2023 à 09:13, Buchholz, Jonas a écrit :
Dear Harry (if I may),

Retroflex l (ळ) is quite common in South Indian Sanskrit manuscripts and prints. For example, in the Śaiva Kāñcīmāhātmya (a Sanskrit sthalamāhātmya on the city of Kanchipuram), I find the following examples just in the first two chapterts: śītal̤a, yugal̤a, uddhūl̤ita, kāl̤ikā, vakul̤a, nāl̤ikera, dal̤a, niṣkal̤a, sakal̤a, kramel̤aka, maul̤i…

Sanskrit loanwords in South Indian languages also often reflect the pronunciation with retroflex l, e.g. the goddes Kālī is called காளி Kāḷi (with retroflex l) in Tamil.

My impression is that there are certain words in which l is quite consistently replaced by retroflex l, while other words retain then “normal” l. However, I have not been able to find any consistent pattern when l becomes retroflex – any insights would be appreciated!

Another question is how retroflex l should be represented in Roman transliteration. The most straightforward solution would be ḷ (in analogy with ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ṣ), which is also the character used for retroflex l in Tamil transliteration, but in IAST transliteration ḷ is already reserved for vocalic l (ऌ). As you can see above, I have tentatively been using l̤ for retroflex l, but I would be happy to know if any other conventions have been used.

Best wishes,
Jonas Buchholz

                                                           ____                _____
Dr. Jonas Buchholz
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Project “Hindu Temple Legends in South India”

Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstr. 2 | Building 4400 | Room 004
69115 Heidelberg, Germany

P:  +49 (0)6221 54 4095
E:  jonas.buchholz at hadw-bw.de<mailto:jonas.buchholz at hadw-bw.de>
W: https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl

Von: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info><mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info> Im Auftrag von Harry Spier via INDOLOGY
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. März 2023 02:10
An: indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>
Betreff: [INDOLOGY] ळ in south Indian grantha sanskrit manuscripts

Dear list members,
I'm looking at the devanagari transcription of a south indian grantha manuscript.  most consonent l's are the classical sanskrit l i.e. ल but some words have the letter, ळ .
Some examples are:
प्रक्षाळ्य

नाळिकेरोद्भवं

पादौप्रक्षाळ्याचम्य

मुकुळीकृतिय

पिण्गळाय

वामांघ्र्यब्जदळासह्रिताम्

अण्गुळ्यग्रेण

शुद्धविद्यातत्वव्याप्तसर्वमणळोपेतं
I'm pretty sure this isn't from typist misprints because प्रक्षाळ्य occcurs many times always spelled with ळ
Any explanations would be appreciated.  My understanding is that sometimes manuscripts were created by one scribe speaking the text and another scribe writing what he hears.  Is that a possible explanation for the occurance of this letter ळ .  I.e. local pronounciation creeping in.

Thanks,
Harry Spier

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Satyanad KICHENASSAMY

Professor of Mathematics

Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims  (CNRS, UMR9008)

Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

F-51687 Reims Cedex 2

France

Web: https://www.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy

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Satyanad KICHENASSAMY

Professor of Mathematics

Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims  (CNRS, UMR9008)

Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

F-51687 Reims Cedex 2

France

Web: https://www.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy

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