I strongly support the requirement to clearly distinguish between
vocalic r̥ and retroflex ṛ.
Low-register manuscripts in Bengali script often follow phonetic
notation rather than precise orthographic rules. So there appears
combinations of characters that are otherwise unthinkable in correct
writing.
For example, you may encounter the word পৃআ [pr̥ā], which at first
glance does not make sense. When you realize that the vocalic r̥ is
pronounced [ri], then it is obvious that the word priyā is meant. If we
transcribe it as pṛā, this information is lost.
Best,
Lubomir
On 07.06.2023 11:28, Dániel Balogh via INDOLOGY wrote:
I can no longer resist chiming in; apologies for rambling and for
stating what may be obvious.
The IAST scheme is indeed much more widely used, but I am not at all
sure if future standards should be based on precedent and if counting
the number of existing publications using one standard or another is any
help. I think there are two main reasons why IAST is widely used. One,
as Harry Spier has pointed out, is that the ISO standards are not openly
accessible. Without having any insight into the workings of ISO
standards in general, as a layman I find this frankly ridiculous and if
Jan Kučera can apply any pressure to change this, this restriction
should be lifted. The other principal reason is that characters with an
undercircle are supported only by a very small number of fonts, and even
some that do support such combinations render them poorly. It is thus
much more convenient for everyone, authors to publishers, to stick to
underdots (which my spell checker immediately changed to underdogs!).
That said, there are good reasons /against/ IAST too, primarily
ambiguity. That is to say, R and L with an underdot are suitable for
representing vocalic R and L only so long as you are dealing with
classical standard Sanskrit. As soon as Vedic enters the picture, you
might use l+underdot for the retroflex flap as well as for the vocalic
L. The retroflex L is also present in Dravidian languages and Marathi,
and in many regional Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions. There is
also the (different?) retroflex flap used e.g. in Hindi and normally
transliterated with r+underdot. According to Wikipedia, IAST uses ḻ (l
with line below) for the former kind of retroflex flap and I have no
idea if it uses anything for the latter kind. That could work, but then
how do we transliterate the retroflex central approximant (ೞ) of some
Dravidian languages? One could argue that this is not required, because
we are talking about Sanskrit transliteration. But ideally, a
transliteration system for Sanskrit ought to be able to transliterate
(unambiguously) any language written in a Brāhmī-derived script. With
this, I am entering murky waters and I would rather not go much further;
it would be too much to hope for a system that can really do this, but
perhaps supporting the major modern and premodern languages of South and
Southeast Asia is not a dream. It is theoretically also possible to
agree on language-dependent standards, as is already the case for
instance with e and o, which (in IAST and in a permitted optional
variant of ISO15919) represent long vowels in Sanskrit, but short vowels
in Dravidian languages. The DHARMA project has chosen to follow (and
expand upon) the ISO standard primarily for this reason, because it is
better suited for a textual corpus in a variety of languages.
As for anusvāra as m with overdot or underdot, it seems largely a
question of taste. That said, there is a good rationale for not choosing
the underdot, which it implies some commonality either with vocalic
trills or with retroflex consonants.
On the whole, one question we must ask ourselves is which situation we
would rather live with: the chaos involved in introducing a new standard
that will not immediately, if ever, become the number one global
standard - or the chaos involved in maintaining multiple standards in
parallel. Those who work primarily or only with classical standard
Sanskrit may prefer the latter, as they are not really affected by its
drawbacks.
Another relevant question is what can be done to improve and propagate
any standard. IAST is not being actively maintained at all beyond a
vague implicit consensus of scholars using it. It is not even a standard
in fact, just a set of conventions that are clearly defined at the
centre, but loose at the periphery: whenever phonemes outside the ambit
of classical standard Sanskrit come into the picture, authors (and/or
publishers) seem to choose transliterations inconsistently on the basis
of conventions found in earlier publications and of whatever diacritical
marks they can produce on their systems. Given that ISO15919 is actively
maintained, and is now to be reconsidered with the involvement of the
scholarly user community, this may be a good time to settle on something
that most of us are willing and able to follow in the future/./
I personally would certainly be happy to jump on the ISO bandwagon
/provided/ that the revised ISO standard will actually be made known to
the public, and not accessible only to those who pay an exorbitant price
for it, get a pirated copy, or rely on incomplete extracts such as that
on Wikipedia. But even then, I think one of the considerations in
revising the standard should be a preference for character combinations
that can actually be displayed properly in more than just a few fonts.
Dan Balogh
On Wed, 7 Jun 2023 at 10:08, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Thank you for the clarification Madhav. Since your book predates
the 15919 standard, I'm wondering what sanskrit books after
creation of the 15919 standard have chosen it over the IAST
standard. The two Clay Sanskrit library books I have use the IAST
transliteration scheme and as far as I can see the Sanskrit etexts
in GRETIL also use IAST. Muktabodha uses IAST.
Harry Spier
On Tue, Jun 6, 2023 at 8:14 PM Madhav Deshpande <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Thanks, Harry, but while writing my संस्कृतसुबोधिनी, which goes back
to mid-1980s, I did not consult "ISO 15919 standard" or any such
documents. I was following, what seemed to me at the time, to be
the prevalent practice. If my memory serves me correctly, to use
r̥, r̥̄, l̥, with small circles under r and l, I was influenced by
Wackernagel's Altindische Grammatik. I had used the same in
designing my diacritics font Manjushree-CSX. While the ancient
fonts used for the संस्कृतसुबोधिनी going back to mid-1980s and the
pre-Unicode Manjushree-CSX are no longer usable, I am generally
continuing to use these diacritics today. Probably just by
acquired habit.
Madhav
Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies,
Bangalore, India
[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]
On Tue, Jun 6, 2023 at 4:38 PM Harry Spier via INDOLOGY
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
To download a pdf of the current ISO 15919 standard (a
30 page document) costs 145 Swiss francs = 160 US dollars.
I'm wondering if this is one of the reasons that most people
use IAST for transliterated Sanskrit. The only place I've
seen the ISO 15919 standard used in a book is Madhav
Deshpande's sanskrit primer संस्कृतसुभोधिनी .
Harry Spier
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