This is a fascinating thread, and Camillo's remarks that there is still much to be done in this area, certainly ring true.

Although McComas's initial concern was to find out when the scribes started inserting spaces, I want to reiterate that the use of spaces is really a European tradition, based on the fact that Europeans had become by the 19th century were no longer comfortable with unspaced texts. (Unspaced printing had been a European tradition, pre-1000.) In fact, many written cultures do not use spaced texts, so we should in no way presume it is a "better" (or, more "advanced") way of presenting text. Extensive presentation of Indian texts with spacing likely is to be matched to the rise of printed texts in India, which was initially directed by Europeans (Carey, Colebrooke, etc).

Related to this are the many 19th discussions of transliterated text, which presume Sanskrit would be "easier" to read for Westerners (especially) missionaries. This, too, is a ridiculous presupposition...

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 10:10 AM, Lubin, Tim via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear Madhav,

[resent: annoyingly, the images did not come through, at least for me; I replace them with links]

I my experience too, breaks in the application of external sandhi is a very common, even routine (if not consistently applied), as the most basic form of “punctuation” in prose texts, used both for logical breaks in the syntax and occasionally just to avoid ambiguity.  Looking at the first lines of a commentary I have recently edited, I can find examples:

In my edition:

(Hope fully the images come through.)  Note the akṣaras on either side of where I have place the first two commas.  I see this all the time.

Best,
Tim

Timothy Lubin
Professor of Religion and Adjunct Professor of Law
Chair of the Department of Religion
Chair of the Middle East and South Asia Studies Program
204 Tucker Hall
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia 24450

http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint 

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Reply-To: Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2018 at 12:40 PM
To: Camillo Formigatti <camillo.formigatti@bodleian.ox.ac.uk>
Cc: INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?

Hello Camillo,

     There is something new to learn.  I noticed your statement: "in many more manuscripts than we might think the non-application of external sandhi is used to mark word boundaries.".  I have not come across such manuscripts, but evidently you have.  Can you give a reference to such a manuscript, or give us a scan of a page from such a manuscript.  Except for the Padapāṭha manuscripts, I am not aware of this practice.  With best wishes,

Madhav Deshpande
Campbell, California

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 9:19 AM, Camillo Formigatti <camillo.formigatti@bodleian.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear McComas

 

As you might have gathered from the various replies, I’m afraid your student asked a question which cannot really be answered, at least not yet—South Asian codicology is still in its cradle. As already pointed out in this thread, blank spaces were used already in Asokan inscriptions. In my modest opinion, the question cannot be easily answered also because we always have to distinguish between scripts and local usages. Moreover, other strategies were employed in manuscripts to achieve the same objective, for instance in many more manuscripts than we might think the non-application of external sandhi is used to mark word boundaries. Also, the word dividers mentioned by Andrew are very widespread in all kind of Northern Indian manuscripts, above all of Gebrauchstexte and famous works which were read for teaching purposes. On the other hand, if I’m not wrong (my expertise in this field is very limited), South Indian scripts tend to have less punctuation and dividing marks than Northern Indian scripts.

 

You can get a good idea of such topics in the following book:

 

Einicke, Katrin. Korrektur, Differenzierung Und Abkürzung in Indischen Inschriften und Handschriften. Abhandlungen Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes ; Bd. 68. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009.

 

As to older manuscripts, I think this article is also very useful:

 

The Poetic and Prosodic Aspect of the Page. Forms and Graphic Artifices of Early Indic Buddhist Manuscripts in a Historical Perspective

Scherrer-Schaub, Cristina

DOI (Chapter): https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110543100-009

 

I hope this is helpful.

 

Best wishes,

 

Camillo

 

 

Dr Camillo A. Formigatti

John Clay Sanskrit Librarian

 

Bodleian Libraries 

The Weston Library

Broad Street, Oxford

OX1 3BG

 

Email: camillo.formigatti@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Tel. (office): 01865 (2)77208
www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

 

GROW YOUR MIND

in Oxford University’s

Gardens, Libraries and Museums

www.mindgrowing.org

 

From: Jonathan Silk [mailto:kauzeya@gmail.com]
Sent: 15 May 2018 09:28
To: Tieken, H.J.H. <H.J.H.Tieken@hum.leidenuniv.nl>
Cc: Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu>; McComas Taylor <McComas.Taylor@anu.edu.au>; indology <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?

 

Alluded to earlier is what happens in Aśoka's inscriptions, studied in detail by Klaus Ludwig Janert:  Abstände und Schlussvokalverzeichnungen in Aśoka-Inschriften, Wiesbaden, : F. Steiner, 1972 . Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland. Supplementband ; 10. Some of the VOHD is available online free, but apparently not this volume, as far as I see from a cursory search. This work was much reviewed, and has an English introduction, so even if you cannot read German it is not difficult to discover his main points.

 

Jonathan

 

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 8:15 AM, Tieken, H.J.H. via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

A few years ago I have edited and translated Tamil letters sent from Ceylon to Cape Town in South Africa between 1728-1737. It concerns private correspondence: mother (dictated to brother-in-law), brothers, in-laws writing to Nicolaas Ondaatje, who had been banished by the Dutch to the Cape. The letters do not show any trace of interspacing. The initial vowel of a word is attached to the final consonant of the preceding word (if that word happens to end with a consonant). The letters lack punctuation and there is no spacing between sentences. There is also no division into paragraphs; a new paragraph may simply start in the middle of the line. However, not infrequently the first letter of a new paragraph is larger than the others (influence from Dutch?).

Herman  

 

Herman Tieken

Stationsweg 58

2515 BP Den Haag

The Netherlands

00 31 (0)70 2208127

Van: INDOLOGY [indology-bounces@list.indology.info] namens Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY [indology@list.indology.info]
Verzonden: dinsdag 15 mei 2018 6:43
Aan: McComas Taylor
CC: indology
Onderwerp: Re: [INDOLOGY] Spaces between words in Sanskrit manuscripts?

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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Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS

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