L2/16-371R2 2017-01-25 Revised proposal to encode the Sogdian script in Unicode Anshuman Pandey
[email protected] January 25, 2017 1 Introduction This is a proposal to encode the Sogdian script in Unicode. It supersedes the following document: • L2/16-158 “Proposal to encode Sogdian in Unicode” A proposal summary form is attached. In addition to substantial modifications, it addresses comments re- garding L2/15-158 and previous drafts of the present proposal that have been made in: • L2/16-037 “Recommendations to UTC #146 January 2016 on Script Proposals” • L2/16-216 “Recommendations to UTC #148 August 2016 on Script Proposals” • L2/17-037 “Recommendations to UTC #150 January 2017 on Script Proposals” A proposed Unicode encoding for the ‘Old Sogdian’ script has been presented in: • L2/16-312R “Proposal to encode the Old Sogdian script in Unicode” The present proposal has been reviewed by Nicholas Sims-Williams and Yutaka Yoshida, who are leading scholars of Sogdian studies. 2 Background The Sogdian script was used primarily for representing Sogdian (ISO 639: sog), an ancient Eastern Iranian language, but also for recording texts in Chinese, Sanskrit, and Uyghur. The script was used primarily for manuscripts written on paper (fig. 60–79), but also for inscriptions on coins (fig. 80), stone (fig. 81–82), pottery (fig. 83), and other media. The script is derived from ‘Old Sogdian’ (see L2/16-312R) and is related to the Syriac and Manichaean scripts (see fig. 1). It is the ancestor of the Uyghur script (see § 2.1) and, in turn, of the Mongolian writing system.