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

website: hermantieken.com

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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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