Dear Professor Tieken,

I’m not knowledged about what you are describing/proposing here. Nevertheless, I’d like to share some of my thoughts. 

I’ve been looking into the technique of rendering numerals in Old Tamil, specifically in the Tolkappiyam and similar texts. 

The phrase that immediately came to my mind was pra-dhaksina (ப்ரதட்சிண), which I take to mean ‘due South.’  

It seems to me that such references are based on ‘clock-wise’ movement. 

Regards, 

rajam 

On Mar 12, 2023, at 1:09 PM, Tieken, H.J.H. (Herman) via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Dear List members,

In a passage in a Jain text I came across a formation consisting of the preposition p(r)a and a cardinal number, in a context in which "over that number (of years)" would make sense (compareprapatha, "weiter Weg", pravīra, "grosser Held", and praṇapat, "Urenkel" in AiGr II, p. 257). The combination pra+number looks like an ad hoc, learned formation. Or, and this is my question, is it perhaps found in other texts I am not aware of, for instance, in treatises about mathematics or temple building?   

With kind regards,

Herman

Herman Tieken

Stationsweg 58

2515 BP Den Haag

The Netherlands

00 31 (0)70 2208127

website: hermantieken.com

The Aśoka Inscriptions: Analysing a corpus, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2023.

https://primusbooks.com/ancient/the-asoka-inscriptions-analysing-a-corpus-by-herman-tieken/

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