Fwd: Q on Grantha

[Jaganath Bharadwaj]

Dear All:

After the recent inclusion of Grantha in the next Unicode version, I had asked my friend in Microsoft if he could help accelerate the process of office 365 including Grantha script.

I intend to respond to his question, but was wondering if anyone else had some points.

The points I was going to make were:

1. All Indian scripts with the exception of Tamil, were developed to write Sanskrit.
2. Tamil script is inadequate to support Sanskrit, & therefore Grantha was developed.
3. There are no political implications as the population that would use the script is not politically significant.
4. The Tamil Nadu government was one of the earliest supporters of large scale advancement in the field of computers including the promotion of research into ancient history & culture.
5. The group that would use this the most will eventually become religious personnel serving the religious needs of the masses.
6. Large scale book printing is getting prohibitively expensive & therefore computers are the way to go for students & educational institutions.

If anyone can think of other points, please write to Srivatsan Parthasarthy copied above. I will send him pictures of pages from Sanskrit & Manipravala books.

Sincerely,
Jagan Bharadwaj.

Svamin is this a script or a language. There is question if this has any language sensitivities or geopolitical implications. Could you provide a paragraph clarifying these issues and make a case on why it is compelling to support soon?

Thx much
Dasan

[Shriramana Sharma]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 12:29 AM, Jaganath Bharadwaj
<rangasat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear All:
>
> After the recent inclusion of Grantha in the next Unicode version, I had
> asked my friend in Microsoft if he could help accelerate the process of
> office 365 including Grantha script.
>
> I intend to respond to his question, but was wondering if anyone else had
> some points.
>
> The points I was going to make were:
>
> 1. All Indian scripts with the exception of Tamil, were developed to write
> Sanskrit.

Correction -- all major Indian scripts with the exception of Tamil and
Gurmukhi are *capable* of writing Sanskrit. We cannot say that they
were developed with the main purpose being to write Sanskrit.

> 2. Tamil script is inadequate to support Sanskrit, & therefore Grantha was
> developed.

You make it sound as if Grantha is a later development. Until the time
of the Pallava-s about 5th to 8th centuries CE, Vattezhuttu was used
to write Tamil and Brahmi/Grantha of the time was used to write
Sanskrit/Prakrit. Pallavas adapted some letters from Vattezhuttu into
the Brahmi/Grantha orthography and evolved the Tamil script. This is
documented in Iravatham Mahadevan's 2003 work on Tamil Brahmi.

> 3. There are no political implications as the population that would use the
> script is not politically significant.

Some people do not like Sanskrit and Grantha. Are you going to NOT
support Grantha because of that?

> 4. The Tamil Nadu government was one of the earliest supporters of large
> scale advancement in the field of computers including the promotion of
> research into ancient history & culture.

Is this relevant to Grantha? I am not sure if this claim can be proven
or disproven.

> 5. The group that would use this the most will eventually become religious
> personnel serving the religious needs of the masses.

IMO the majority usage would be equally divided between scholars
handling manuscripts in this script and those seeking to print
religious texts in this script.

> 6. Large scale book printing is getting prohibitively expensive & therefore
> computers are the way to go for students & educational institutions.

I guess there is no doubt that e-media is cheaper (and lighter on the
environment) than printed books.

> If anyone can think of other points, please write to Srivatsan Parthasarthy
> copied above. I will send him pictures of pages from Sanskrit & Manipravala
> books.
>
> Sincerely,
> Jagan Bharadwaj.
>
> Svamin is this a script or a language. There is question if this has any
> language sensitivities or geopolitical implications. Could you provide a
> paragraph clarifying these issues and make a case on why it is compelling to
> support soon?

Grantha is a script used to write Sanskrit language mostly with some
rare attested old usage for Prakrit, Kannada and Telugu. There is no
Grantha language, just like there is no Sanskrit script. (Devanagari
script is NOT Sanskrit script!)

For other questions, see above.

--
Shriramana Sharma ஶ்ரீரமணஶர்மா श्रीरमणशर्मा