[INDOLOGY] Fwd: ळ in south Indian grantha sanskrit manuscripts
Satyanad Kichenassamy
satyanad.kichenassamy at univ-reims.fr
Fri Mar 24 17:37:00 UTC 2023
Dear Jonas,
It is not clear that IAST is that universal among us (Sanskritists). As
Keith pointed out, many of us do use something like ISO 15919. I use
IAST or ISO 15919 in my papers when I analyze Sanskrit texts, for the
reason you gave. But I usually try to include if possible the text in an
Indian script, preferably Grantha for South Indian texts, and Nagari
otherwise, to avoid confusions.
What I was suggesting is that since GRETIL usually includes several
versions of each text, it may be feasible to include one more version in
a truly inclusive transliteration. As I said, this is necessary when
considering South Indian mss, and possibly other mss.
Of course, IAST may have to evolve eventually. We do not use the same
transcriptions as, say, Colebrooke even though he is still worth reading
today. As பவணந்தி (Pavananti) wrote,
பழையன கழிதலும் புதியன புகுதலும்
வழுவல கால வகையி னானே
(நன்னூல் ௪௬௨)
(It is not wrong that the old should be discarded and innovations
introduced for such is indeed the way of Time.)
Best regards,
Satyanad
Le 24/03/2023 à 15:54, Buchholz, Jonas a écrit :
>
> 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 <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> 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 காளிKāḷi (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
>
> W: https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl <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
> *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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> INDOLOGY mailing list
>
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>
> https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
>
> --
>
> **********************************************
>
> 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
>
> **********************************************
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
>
> --
> **********************************************
> 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
> **********************************************
--
**********************************************
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
**********************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20230324/8c83163d/attachment.htm>
More information about the INDOLOGY
mailing list