Dear Jonas,
It is not clear that IAST is that universal among us (Sanskritists). As
Keith pointed out, many of us do use something like ISO 15919. I use
IAST or ISO 15919 in my papers when I analyze Sanskrit texts, for the
reason you gave. But I usually try to include if possible the text in an
Indian script, preferably Grantha for South Indian texts, and Nagari
otherwise, to avoid confusions.
What I was suggesting is that since GRETIL usually includes several
versions of each text, it may be feasible to include one more version in
a truly inclusive transliteration. As I said, this is necessary when
considering South Indian mss, and possibly other mss.
Of course, IAST may have to evolve eventually. We do not use the same
transcriptions as, say, Colebrooke even though he is still worth reading
today. As பவணந்தி (Pavananti) wrote,
பழையன கழிதலும் புதியன புகுதலும்
வழுவல கால வகையி னானே
(நன்னூல் ௪௬௨)
(It is not wrong that the old should be discarded and innovations
introduced for such is indeed the way of Time.)
Best regards,
Satyanad
Le 24/03/2023 à 15:54, Buchholz, Jonas a écrit :
Dear Satyanad,
indeed, as you point out, the IAST transliteration for Sanskrit and
the standard Tamil transliteration are not really compatible, e/ē and
o/ō being another case in point. Some Tamil transliteration schemes
solve the problem by transliterating long e and o as e/o (as in IAST)
and short e and o as ĕ/ŏ, but of course that is completely illogical
from the perspective of the Tamil language. ISO 15919 has the big
advantage of being compatible with all Indic script and languages, but
given that IAST has long been accepted as the standard for Sanskrit
transliteration, I doubt whether Sanskritists would be willing to
adopt a different transliteration scheme.
Best wishes,
Jonas
_ ____ _____
_
*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
E: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
W: https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl <https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl>
*From:*INDOLOGY <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of
*Satyanad Kichenassamy
*Sent:* Freitag, 24. März 2023 14:46
*To:* Harry Spier <[email protected]>; [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] Fwd: ळ in south Indian grantha sanskrit
manuscripts
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
Le 24/03/2023 à 14:18, Harry Spier a écrit :
Looking at this page of wikipedia IAST uses l underbar for
retroflex l.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Alphabet_of_Sanskrit_Transliteration#Comparison_with_ISO_15919
Harry Spier
On Fri, Mar 24, 2023 at 6:32 AM Satyanad Kichenassamy
<[email protected]> 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
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant> 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 காளிKāḷi (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
E: [email protected]
W: https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl <https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl>
*Von:*INDOLOGY <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> *Im Auftrag
von *Harry Spier via INDOLOGY
*Gesendet:* Freitag, 24. März 2023 02:10
*An:* [email protected]
*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:
प्रक्षाळ्य
नाळिकेरोद्भवं
पादौप्रक्षाळ्याचम्य
मुकुळीकृतिय
पिण्गळाय
वामांघ्र्यब्जदळासह्रिताम्
अण्गुळ्यग्रेण
शुद्धविद्यातत्वव्याप्तसर्वमणळोपेतं
I'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
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--
**********************************************
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
**********************************************
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INDOLOGY mailing list
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--
**********************************************
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
**********************************************
--
**********************************************
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
**********************************************
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