Attached are two extracts from a   bagalāmukhīpañcāṅgam   manuscript  of Shri Raghunatha Temple Library  (I've put a link to the full manuscript  at the end of this email).
If you look at the first attached extract  you'll see that on the same folio 4B the scribe has spelled the same word bindu as both  बिंदु and विंदु
If you look at the second attached extract you'll see the scribe wrote  bagalāmukhī/ā 3 times with बगल...  (one of those times mispelled with balā... not bagalā...)  and twice with वगल... in the space of 5 folios. 

Note: the blue highlighted is from me not from the original manuscript.

So what does that mean?
1) The scribe was a professional scribe who didn't know sanskrit but was just copying existing errors or copying a difficult to read manuscript.?
or
2) It wasn't considered important  by the scholarly/religeous clients that he conflated v and b because they were used to that and in any case they knew sanskrit so it wasn't important to them?
or
3) Something else?

Link to the complete manuscript
https://archive.org/download/BagulaMukhiPanchangamAlm27Shlf16025DevanagariTantra/Bagula%20Mukhi%20Panchangam_Alm_27_shlf_1_6025_Devanagari%20-%20Tantra.pdf


Harry Spier


On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 5:24 AM Philipp Maas <philipp.a.maas@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Dominik and Harry,
Determining “exactly what the MS says” may sometimes be a less straightforward task than it may seem. Frequently, transcribing requires interpreting. To quote Walter Slaje:

“The ambiguity of some 
characters of the Śāradā script that are almost, or in many cases actually, homographic makes reference to the lexicon, grammar, and syntax now and then a necessary condition for the interpretation of a character. In any case, an interactive process of script deciphering and textual understanding is required.
(My rough translation of Slaje, Walter (1993). Śāradā. Deskriptiv-synchrone Schriftkunde zur Bearbeitung kaschmirischer Sanskrit-Manuskripte auf der Grundlage von Kuśalas Ghaṭakharpara-Gūḍhadīpikā. Reinbek: Verl. für Orientalistische Fachpublikationen, (Indische Schriften 1), p. 2: Beding durch die Mehrdeutigkeit einiger nahezu oder oft auch tatsächlich homographer Zeichen der Śārdā-Schrift ist der Rückgriff auf Lexikon, Grammatik oder Satzkonstruktion mitunter eine notwendige Voraussetzung für die Deutung der Schriftzeichen. Es bedarf daher auf jeden Fall eines wechselwirkenden Verfahrens von Schriftentzifferung und Textverständnis.”)

Slaje provides a list of “semi-homograph akṣara-s” in the Śāradā script,  including ba and vaon p. 43-45.

I fully agree with Dominik that orthographic peculiarities like the gemination of consonants after r, the writing of class nasals and anusvara, etc., should be exactly reflected in transcriptions. However, any manuscript transcript should be based on a benevolent interpretation of the Sanskrit text transmitted in the witness, containing, for example, ba or va, when and wherever required by the contexts.
With best wishes,

Philipp



__________________________

PD Dr. Philipp A. Maas
Research Associate
Department of Indology and Central Asian Studies
University of Leipzig
___________________________

https://spp1448.academia.edu/PhilippMaas


Am Mo., 13. März 2023 um 20:42 Uhr schrieb Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>:
In transcribing a manuscript it is best practice to transcribe diplomatically exactly what the MS says. 

A second, separate file may be prepared that contains various normalisations, like ba/va or śa/sa, rma/rmma, etc.

To normalise the main transcription file takes away the opportunity to study these phenomena.  And in any case, the majority of these features can be manipulated with regular-expression rules, as in Saktumiva.  So there's no need to normalise them. 

Best,
Dominik


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