Dominik,

I came across similar signs in proto-Bengali manuscripts and gathered some information and documentation with the help of my colleagues in Vienna.

I'm attaching a PDF summarizing what I found (this was back in 2017). It's interesting that they would occur in a Nepalese ms. this late. 

Generally helpful in such cases is Katrin Einicke, „Korrektur, Differenzierung und Abkürzung in indischen Inschriften und Handschriften“, Wiesbaden 2009 (references to relevant pages in my PDF). 

Hope this helps,

best regards,

Birgit

I am looking for help with these signs that I'm seeing in the fifteenth-century Nepalese MS,  MS Kathmandu NAK 5-333:

and

Here, the surrounding word is pāke

These symbols are not letters, since they don't contribute to the surrounding text, but interrupt it.  I have wondered whether they are the scribe expressing that his archetype has a string-hole at this place, perhaps, but I don't see the symbols often enough for that.  They occur rather rarely.

Has anyone seen these?

Best,

Dominik

--

Professor Dominik Wujastyk

,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity

,

Department of History and Classics

,

University of Alberta, Canada

.

South Asia at the U of A:

 

sas.ualberta.ca

SSHRC research: The Suśruta Project

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