Dear Jan,

Thank you for this.

Lantsha as used in Tibetan and Mongolia permits various elaborate combinations for mantras, as seen in the upper folio side. For instance, the red graph, of which the candrabindu has been effaced, is read: ha(M)-kSa-ma-la-ba[= va]-ra-ya. Some strategy for dealing with such graphs - whether to treat them as discrete characters (on analogy to Chinese), of to leave them out and require that users paste them in as graphic elements - will at some point need to be made explicit.

But thanks again for the initiative,
and good luck to those participating!
Matthew

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Matthew T. Kapstein
Professor emeritus
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL Research University, Paris

Associate
The University of Chicago Divinity School

https://ephe.academia.edu/MatthewKapstein

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------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, April 27th, 2023 at 1:23 PM, Jan Kučera <jan.kucera@matfyz.cz> wrote:

Dear all,

 

Unicode keeps receiving proposals for encoding scripts from both past and present India and I thought it might be valuable to reach out and encourage feedback from the Indology community.

 

One of the proposed scripts for encoding is for Pabuchi, a script used for writing Sirmauri and Mahasui languages used by astrologers in Himachal Pradesh. Is anybody familiar or have any contacts with this community? I would like to independently verify some of the claims made in the proposal, especially since the knowledge of the script has traditionally been considered sacred and not for sharing.

 

Another proposal we would be looking for feedback on is Ranjana (unified with Lantsa) for writing Sanskrit, Newar and other local languages. The proposal is available at https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2023/23028-ranjana.pdf.

 

Feel free to respond in the group or reach out to me offline if you had any comments or suggestions.

 

Thank you and best regards,

Jan