H. H. Wilson, in his introduction to Stevenson's Sanhita of the Sama Veda (1842) observes: "The Manuscript sent home by Mr. Stevenson is written in the usual method of Sanskrit Manuscripts ; and has the words arranged continuously, without any separation. The difliculties of the language of the Vedas do not need to be aggravated by the perplexity which this style of writing involves, especially when the words are obsolete or unusual, and their dissection is unaided by previous familiarity with them in their unconnected state. This has been felt by native Sanskrit scholars ; and hence have arisen the Padas, or copies of the Sanhitås of the different Vedas, in which the connection of concurrent words is broken down, and each word is placed within lines or brackets in its crude or uncompounded and unattached form. Half the difficulty of the Text is at once removed by this expedient ; and I have thought that a similar assistance would not be unthankfully received by the European Scholar. I have therefore followed the Pada so far as to separate the words upon the principle that seems to be least objectionable—that of dividing them from the words or passages which follow, when it can be done without any offensive violation of the laws of Sandhi or euphonic combination. It is needless to observe, that this is very often quite practicable, and that it is always convenient to the reader. The adoption of this modification has occasioned me very considerable trouble; but if it has furnished that facility to the understanding of the Text which may be expected to result from it, I shall not regret my labour."

This is somewhat different, but not entirely contradicted by Monier Williams's remarks in his "A Practical Grammar" (and more or less repeated verbatim later by Whitney):

OF THE INDIAN METHOD OF WRITING.

26. According to Hindu grammarians every syllable ought to end in a vowel, and every final consonant ought to be attracted to the beginning of the next syllable; that where a word ends in a consonant, that consonant ought to be pronounced with the initial letter of the next word. Hence in some Sanskrit MSS. all the syllables are separated by slight spaces, and in others all the words are joined together without any separation. Thus the two words asid raja would in some books be written and in others In Sanskrit works printed in Europe, the common practice is to separate only those words the final or initial letter of which are not acted on by the rules of combination. In such books asid raja would be written together, because the final is the result of an euphonic change from caused by the following r. There seems, however, but little reason for considering the mere spaces left between the words of a sentence to be incompatible with the operation of euphonic laws ; especially as the absence of such spaces must always cause more or less impediment even to the fluent reader. Therefore in many books recently printed in Europe, every uncompounded word capable of separation by the use of the Viråma is separated. ... (Practical Grammar, p. 16, 1857)

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 10:01 PM, Andrew Ollett via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Some of the Prakrit manuscripts I've seen---most relatively recent, but nevertheless pre-print---separate words in the Prakrit text with a dot or with small daṇḍa-like marks above the line (the latter may have been added subsequently). Words aren't separated in the accompanying Sanskrit commentaries to these texts.

There are spaces between (some) words in most versions of Asoka's pillar edicts, but I'm not sure how frequent interword spacing is in later inscriptions, if it happens at all.

2018-05-14 23:43 GMT-05:00 Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>:
Dear McComas,

This must have happened gradually after the Sanskrit Pundits were exposed to English printing. Even the early Sanskrit printed texts in the form of pothis did not separate words. I have many such old printed materials. I have attached a sample page. If this practice continued into early printing, it is simply because the printing style was copying the writing style of the manuscripts. I have photographs of a few texts that were hand written by the famous Pandit Vasudeva Shastri Abhyankar where I do not see gaps between the words. Early pothis of Vedic texts printed by the Nirnaya Sagara Press also do not show any gaps between words.

Madhav Deshpande
Campbell, California

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 9:02 PM, McComas Taylor via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Dear colleagues

A student has asked me a questions I cannot answer: 'When did scribes begin to insert spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?'

Can any of you learned folk help us out?

Thanks in advance

McComas

------------------------------------------------------------------------

McComas Taylor, SFHEA
Associate Professor, Reader in Sanskrit
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University, Tel. + 61 2 6125 3179
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/mccomasanu/

Address: Baldessin Building 4.24, ANU, ACT 0200

Ask me about my new project:

'Translating the Viṣṇu Purāṇa'

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