Sound Pattern of Sanskrit in Asia (Frits Staal)

[N. Ganesan]

When we look at the abugida pattern of the
scripts of India, and in South East Asia,
the impact of Vedic discovery of Phonetic
knowledge about human language is striking.
For example, look at the letters of the
Indian as well as South East Asian scripts
from Unicode code charts:
http://www.unicode.org/charts/

The Sound Pattern of Sanskrit in Asia:
An Unheralded Contribution by Indian Brahmans and Buddhist Monks
Frits Staal, University of California, Berkeley,
Sanskrit Studies Central Journal. Journal of the Sanskrit Studies
Centre,
Silpakorn University, 2 (2006) 193-200, Thailand.
I uploaded the interesting paper by prof. F. Staal in
http://dakshinatya.blogspot.com/2008/12/staal-sanskrit.html

BTW, the Grantha script will be in Unicode soon.
We can read any Indian script in one's own motherscript at the
touch of a button in the net. A "motherscript" concept
of 21st century which will have large impact like "mothertongue"
concept of 19the century. India needs to have not only bio- wildlife-,
dress-, cultural-, language- culinary- diversities, For the Indian
Federation to
work well, we need languages' script diversity as well.

N. Ganesan

[Vinodh Rajan]

Nice Analysis.

That even arabic had some sort of Indic Ordering, at one point of time in interesting.

But I wonder why the unicode adopted different paradigms for encoding the various Brahmic Scripts.

Indic - Consonant Linked
Tibetan - Subjoined
Thai - Visual

They could have had a followed a single system for the entire Brahmic Family to allow easy internal conversion

Tibetan: <pa> + <da> + <subjoined ma> + <e marker> - Padme

Indic: <pa> + <da> + <virama> + <ma> + <e marker> - Padme


//
The numbers of South, Southeast and Central Asian scripts that adopted the Indic order is large. An attractive estimate occurs in the tenth chapter of the Lalitavistara, called Lipiśâlâsaṃdarśanaparivarta, “the revolution of displays of the mansions of writing.” It lists 64 different scripts that were mastered by the Bodhisattva.
//

திராவிட லிபி - லலிதவிஸ்தாரம் - தமிழ் பிராமி     :)


//If the sound pattern of Sanskrit had also reached the Near East and Europe, there would not be so many clumsy alphabets around and the modern world would have the benefit of rational and practical Indic syllabaries in addition to rational and practical Indic numerals.//

The Idea of European Languages being written in Brahmi is really funny ;)

di aiḍiyā āph yūropiyan lāṅgvejas in brāhmik skripṭs is phanni :))))))))))))))))))

//BTW, the Grantha script will be in Unicode soon. //

Waiting for Siddham too..

(I hate attaching images of the characters !! )

<<Thanks>> for the article.

Ending the Post with Auspicious Bijas and a Thanks  :P