That's one more reason to revise IAST since the letter you
mention (ḻ) is the now
standard transliteration for another letter, the Tamil ழ் namely,
the final letter of Tamiḻ.
The
French used to have a different system that mixes lower and
upper-case characters, but this system does not seem to be very
popular anymore.
IAST,
as its name indicates, is adapted to Sanskrit only. Another
familiar issue is fact that e and o indicate long letters in
IAST and short ones in Tamil, and in other languages that have
these short letters.
From
a practical viewpoint, it would be nice to have versions in
GRETIL and other repositories that are more inclusive, at least
Tamil-compatible, since manuscripts containing Tamil and
Sanskrit text together are plenty. S'aivism is an obvious
example. For mathematics, especially in the Madhava school that
produced extremely interesting results from the fourteenth
century onwards, Malayalam and Sanskrit may be used
concurrently, so that the same issue arises.
One
should remember that in India, texts in several languages are
very common, and that the problem was solved by having a
different script for each language. Transliteration in such
cases fails to reproduce an essential element of manuscripts. I
remember a music composition that used four scripts.
We
Indologists needs to be as inclusive as possible for obvious
reasons.
Satyanad
Kichenassamy
Looking at this page of wikipedia IAST uses l underbar for retroflex l.
On Fri, Mar 24, 2023 at 6:32 AM Satyanad Kichenassamy <satyanad.kichenassamy@univ-reims.fr> wrote:
Dear Jonas (if I may),
IAST, as you say, is not satisfactory. ISO 15919 is better in this regard, as it distinguishes ḷ and l̥. IPA uses l̩ for ऌ.
Best regards,
Satyanad Kichenassamy
Le 24/03/2023 à 09:13, Buchholz, Jonas a écrit :
Dear Harry (if I may),
Retroflex l (ळ) is quite common in South Indian Sanskrit manuscripts and prints. For example, in the Śaiva Kāñcīmāhātmya (a Sanskrit sthalamāhātmya on the city of Kanchipuram), I find the following examples just in the first two chapterts: śītal̤a, yugal̤a, uddhūl̤ita, kāl̤ikā, vakul̤a, nāl̤ikera, dal̤a, niṣkal̤a, sakal̤a, kramel̤aka, maul̤i…
Sanskrit loanwords in South Indian languages also often reflect the pronunciation with retroflex l, e.g. the goddes Kālī is called காளி Kāḷi (with retroflex l) in Tamil.
My impression is that there are certain words in which l is quite consistently replaced by retroflex l, while other words retain then “normal” l. However, I have not been able to find any consistent pattern when l becomes retroflex – any insights would be appreciated!
Another question is how retroflex l should be represented in Roman transliteration. The most straightforward solution would be ḷ (in analogy with ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ṣ), which is also the character used for retroflex l in Tamil transliteration, but in IAST transliteration ḷ is already reserved for vocalic l (ऌ). As you can see above, I have tentatively been using l̤ for retroflex l, but I would be happy to know if any other conventions have been used.
Best wishes,
Jonas Buchholz
____ _____
Dr. Jonas Buchholz
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Project “Hindu Temple Legends in South India”
Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstr. 2 | Building 4400 | Room 004
69115 Heidelberg, Germany
P: +49 (0)6221 54 4095
Von: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> Im Auftrag von Harry Spier via INDOLOGY
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. März 2023 02:10
An: indology@list.indology.info
Betreff: [INDOLOGY] ळ in south Indian grantha sanskrit manuscripts
Dear list members,
I'm looking at the devanagari transcription of a south indian grantha manuscript. most consonent l's are the classical sanskrit l i.e. ल but some words have the letter, ळ .
Some examples are:
प्रक्षाळ्यनाळिकेरोद्भवंपादौप्रक्षाळ्याचम्यमुकुळीकृतियपिण्गळायवामांघ्र्यब्जदळासह्रिताम्अण्गुळ्यग्रेणशुद्धविद्यातत्वव्याप्तसर्वमणळोपेतंI'm pretty sure this isn't from typist misprints because प्रक्षाळ्य occcurs many times always spelled with ळ
Any explanations would be appreciated. My understanding is that sometimes manuscripts were created by one scribe speaking the text and another scribe writing what he hears. Is that a possible explanation for the occurance of this letter ळ . I.e. local pronounciation creeping in.
Thanks,
Harry Spier
_______________________________________________ INDOLOGY mailing list INDOLOGY@list.indology.info https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology-- ********************************************** Satyanad KICHENASSAMY Professor of Mathematics Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims (CNRS, UMR9008) Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne F-51687 Reims Cedex 2 France Web: https://www.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy **********************************************
_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY@list.indology.info
https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
-- ********************************************** Satyanad KICHENASSAMY Professor of Mathematics Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims (CNRS, UMR9008) Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne F-51687 Reims Cedex 2 France Web: https://www.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy **********************************************