Digitizing Penn's Indic Manuscripts
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The Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Niya and Their Contribution to Gāndhārī Studies
The Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Niya and Their Contribution to Gāndhārī Studies Stefan Baums University of Munich [email protected] Niya Document 511 recto 1. viśu͚dha‐cakṣ̄u bhavati tathāgatānaṃ bhavatu prabhasvara hiterṣina viśu͚dha‐gātra sukhumāla jināna pūjā suchavi paramārtha‐darśana 4 ciraṃ ca āyu labhati anālpakaṃ 5. pratyeka‐budha ca karoṃti yo s̄ātravivegam āśṛta ganuktamasya 1 ekābhirāma giri‐kaṃtarālaya 2. na tasya gaṃḍa piṭakā svakartha‐yukta śamathe bhavaṃti gune rata śilipataṃ tatra vicārcikaṃ teṣaṃ pi pūjā bhavatu [v]ā svayaṃbhu[na] 4 1 suci sugaṃdha labhati sa āśraya 6. koḍinya‐gotra prathamana karoṃti yo s̄ātraśrāvaka {?} ganuktamasya 2 teṣaṃ ca yo āsi subha͚dra pac̄ima 3. viśāla‐netra bhavati etasmi abhyaṃdare ye prabhasvara atīta suvarna‐gātra abhirūpa jinorasa te pi bhavaṃtu darśani pujita 4 2 samaṃ ca pādo utarā7. imasmi dāna gana‐rāya prasaṃṭ́hita u͚tama karoṃti yo s̄ātra sthaira c̄a madhya navaka ganuktamasya 3 c̄a bhikṣ̄u m It might be going to far to say that Torwali is the direct lineal descendant of the Niya Prakrit, but there is no doubt that out of all the modern languages it shows the closest resemblance to it. [...] that area around Peshawar, where [...] there is most reason to believe was the original home of Niya Prakrit. That conclusion, which was reached for other reasons, is thus confirmed by the distribution of the modern dialects. (Burrow 1936) Under this name I propose to include those inscriptions of Aśoka which are recorded at Shahbazgaṛhi and Mansehra in the Kharoṣṭhī script, the vehicle for the remains of much of this dialect. To be included also are the following sources: the Buddhist literary text, the Dharmapada found in Khotan, written likewise in Kharoṣṭhī [...]; the Kharoṣṭhī documents on wood, leather, and silk from Caḍ́ota (the Niya site) on the border of the ancient kingdom of Khotan, which represented the official language of the capital Krorayina [...]. -
An Introduction to Indic Scripts
An Introduction to Indic Scripts Richard Ishida W3C [email protected] HTML version: http://www.w3.org/2002/Talks/09-ri-indic/indic-paper.html PDF version: http://www.w3.org/2002/Talks/09-ri-indic/indic-paper.pdf Introduction This paper provides an introduction to the major Indic scripts used on the Indian mainland. Those addressed in this paper include specifically Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu. I have used XHTML encoded in UTF-8 for the base version of this paper. Most of the XHTML file can be viewed if you are running Windows XP with all associated Indic font and rendering support, and the Arial Unicode MS font. For examples that require complex rendering in scripts not yet supported by this configuration, such as Bengali, Oriya, and Malayalam, I have used non- Unicode fonts supplied with Gamma's Unitype. To view all fonts as intended without the above you can view the PDF file whose URL is given above. Although the Indic scripts are often described as similar, there is a large amount of variation at the detailed implementation level. To provide a detailed account of how each Indic script implements particular features on a letter by letter basis would require too much time and space for the task at hand. Nevertheless, despite the detail variations, the basic mechanisms are to a large extent the same, and at the general level there is a great deal of similarity between these scripts. It is certainly possible to structure a discussion of the relevant features along the same lines for each of the scripts in the set. -
Tibetan Romanization Table
Tibetan Comment [LRH1]: Transliteration revisions are highlighted below in light-gray or otherwise noted in a comment. ALA-LC romanization of Tibetan letters follows the principles of the Wylie transliteration system, as described by Turrell Wylie (1959). Diacritical marks are used for those letters representing Indic or other non-Tibetan languages, and parallel the use of these marks when transcribing their counterpart letters in Sanskrit. These are applied for the sake of consistency, and to reflect international publishing standards. Accordingly, romanize words of non-Tibetan origin systematically (following this table) in all cases, even though the word may derive from Sanskrit or another language. When Tibetan is written in another script (e.g., ʼPhags-pa) the corresponding letters in that script are also romanized according to this table. Consonants (see Notes 1-3) Vernacular Romanization Vernacular Romanization Vernacular Romanization ka da zha ཀ་ ད་ ཞ་ kha na za ཁ་ ན་ ཟ་ Comment [LH2]: While the current ALA-LC ga pa ’a table stipulates that an apostrophe should be used, ག་ པ་ འ་ this revision proposal recommends that the long- nga pha ya standing defacto LC practice of using an alif (U+02BC) be continued and explicitly stipulated in ང་ ཕ་ ཡ་ the Table. See accompanying Narrative for details. ca ba ra ཅ་ བ་ ར་ cha ma la ཆ་ མ་ ལ་ ja tsa sha ཇ་ ཙ་ ཤ་ nya tsha sa ཉ་ ཚ་ ས་ ta dza ha ཏ་ ཛ་ ཧ་ tha wa a ཐ་ ཝ་ ཨ་ Vowels and Diphthongs (see Notes 4 and 5) ཨི་ i ཨཱི་ ī རྀ་ r̥ ཨུ་ u ཨཱུ་ ū རཱྀ་ r̥̄ ཨེ་ e ཨཻ་ ai ལྀ་ ḷ ཨོ་ o ཨཽ་ au ལཱྀ ḹ ā ཨཱ་ Other Letters or Diacritical Marks Used in Words of Non-Tibetan Origin (see Notes 6 and 7) ṭa gha ḍha ཊ་ གྷ་ ཌྷ་ ṭha jha anusvāra ṃ Comment [LH3]: This letter combination does ཋ་ ཇྷ་ ◌ ཾ not occur in Tibetan texts, and has been deprecated from the Unicode Standard. -
Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati
Component-I (A) – Personal details: Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. & Dr. K. Muniratnam Director i/c, Epigraphy, ASI, Mysore Dr. Sayantani Pal Dept. of AIHC, University of Calcutta. Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. Component-I (B) – Description of module: Subject Name Indian Culture Paper Name Indian Epigraphy Module Name/Title Kharosthi Script Module Id IC / IEP / 15 Pre requisites Kharosthi Script – Characteristics – Origin – Objectives Different Theories – Distribution and its End Keywords E-text (Quadrant-I) : 1. Introduction Kharosthi was one of the major scripts of the Indian subcontinent in the early period. In the list of 64 scripts occurring in the Lalitavistara (3rd century CE), a text in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Kharosthi comes second after Brahmi. Thus both of them were considered to be two major scripts of the Indian subcontinent. Both Kharosthi and Brahmi are first encountered in the edicts of Asoka in the 3rd century BCE. 2. Discovery of the script and its Decipherment The script was first discovered on one side of a large number of coins bearing Greek legends on the other side from the north western part of the Indian subcontinent in the first quarter of the 19th century. Later in 1830 to 1834 two full inscriptions of the time of Kanishka bearing the same script were found at Manikiyala in Pakistan. After this discovery James Prinsep named the script as ‘Bactrian Pehelevi’ since it occurred on a number of so called ‘Bactrian’ coins. To James Prinsep the characters first looked similar to Pahlavi (Semitic) characters. -
Simplified Abugidas
Simplified Abugidas Chenchen Ding, Masao Utiyama, and Eiichiro Sumita Advanced Translation Technology Laboratory, Advanced Speech Translation Research and Development Promotion Center, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology 3-5 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, 619-0289, Japan fchenchen.ding, mutiyama, [email protected] phonogram segmental abjad Abstract writing alphabet system An abugida is a writing system where the logogram syllabic abugida consonant letters represent syllables with Figure 1: Hierarchy of writing systems. a default vowel and other vowels are de- noted by diacritics. We investigate the fea- ណូ ន ណណន នួន ននន …ជិតណណន… sibility of recovering the original text writ- /noon/ /naen/ /nuən/ /nein/ vowel machine ten in an abugida after omitting subordi- diacritic omission learning ណន នន methods nate diacritics and merging consonant let- consonant character ters with similar phonetic values. This is merging N N … J T N N … crucial for developing more efficient in- (a) ABUGIDA SIMPLIFICATION (b) RECOVERY put methods by reducing the complexity in abugidas. Four abugidas in the south- Figure 2: Overview of the approach in this study. ern Brahmic family, i.e., Thai, Burmese, ters equally. In contrast, abjads (e.g., the Arabic Khmer, and Lao, were studied using a and Hebrew scripts) do not write most vowels ex- newswire 20; 000-sentence dataset. We plicitly. The third type, abugidas, also called al- compared the recovery performance of a phasyllabary, includes features from both segmen- support vector machine and an LSTM- tal and syllabic systems. In abugidas, consonant based recurrent neural network, finding letters represent syllables with a default vowel, that the abugida graphemes could be re- and other vowels are denoted by diacritics. -
The Formal Kharoṣṭhī Script from the Northern Tarim Basin in Northwest
Acta Orientalia Hung. 73 (2020) 3, 335–373 DOI: 10.1556/062.2020.00015 Th e Formal Kharoṣṭhī script from the Northern Tarim Basin in Northwest China may write an Iranian language1 FEDERICO DRAGONI, NIELS SCHOUBBEN and MICHAËL PEYROT* L eiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden, Postbus 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, Th e Netherlands E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; *Corr esponding Author: [email protected] Received: February 13, 2020 •Accepted: May 25, 2020 © 2020 The Authors ABSTRACT Building on collaborative work with Stefan Baums, Ching Chao-jung, Hannes Fellner and Georges-Jean Pinault during a workshop at Leiden University in September 2019, tentative readings are presented from a manuscript folio (T II T 48) from the Northern Tarim Basin in Northwest China written in the thus far undeciphered Formal Kharoṣṭhī script. Unlike earlier scholarly proposals, the language of this folio can- not be Tocharian, nor can it be Sanskrit or Middle Indic (Gāndhārī). Instead, it is proposed that the folio is written in an Iranian language of the Khotanese-Tumšuqese type. Several readings are proposed, but a full transcription, let alone a full translation, is not possible at this point, and the results must consequently remain provisional. KEYWORDS Kharoṣṭhī, Formal Kharoṣṭhī, Khotanese, Tumšuqese, Iranian, Tarim Basin 1 We are grateful to Stefan Baums, Chams Bernard, Ching Chao-jung, Doug Hitch, Georges-Jean Pinault and Nicholas Sims-Williams for very helpful discussions and comments on an earlier draft. We also thank the two peer-reviewers of the manuscript. One of them, Richard Salomon, did not wish to remain anonymous, and espe- cially his observation on the possible relevance of Khotan Kharoṣṭhī has proved very useful. -
S41598-021-85710-8.Pdf
www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN Distribution and altitudinal patterns of carbon and nitrogen storage in various forest ecosystems in the central Yunnan Plateau, China Jianqiang Li*, Qibo Chen, Zhuang Li, Bangxiao Peng, Jianlong Zhang, Xuexia Xing, Binyang Zhao & Denghui Song The carbon (C) pool in forest ecosystems plays a long-term and sustained role in mitigating the impacts of global warming, and the sequestration of C is closely linked to the nitrogen (N) cycle. Accurate estimates C and N storage (SC, SN) of forest can improve our understanding of C and N cycles and help develop sustainable forest management policies in the content of climate change. In this study, the SC and SN of various forest ecosystems dominated respectively by Castanopsis carlesii and Lithocarpus mairei (EB), Pinus yunnanensis (PY), Pinus armandii (PA), Keteleeria evelyniana (KE), and Quercus semecarpifolia (QS) in the central Yunnan Plateau of China, were estimated on the basis of a feld inventory to determine the distribution and altitudinal patterns of SC and SN among various −1 forest ecosystems. The results showed that (1) the forest SC ranged from 179.58 ± 20.57 t hm in QS to 365.89 ± 35.03 t hm−1 in EB. Soil, living biomass and litter contributed an average of 64.73%, 31.72% −1 and 2.86% to forest SC, respectively; (2) the forest SN ranged from 4.47 ± 0.94 t ha in PY to 8.91 ± 1.83 t ha−1 in PA. Soil, plants and litter contributed an average of 86.88%, 10.27% and 2.85% to forest SN, respectively; (3) the forest SC and SN decreased apparently with increasing altitude. -
Töwkhön, the Retreat of Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar As a Pilgrimage Site Zsuzsa Majer Budapest
Töwkhön, The ReTReaT of öndöR GeGeen ZanabaZaR as a PilGRimaGe siTe Zsuzsa Majer Budapest he present article describes one of the revived up to the site is not always passable even by jeep, T Mongolian monasteries, having special especially in winter or after rain. Visitors can reach the significance because it was once the retreat and site on horseback or on foot even when it is not possible workshop of Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar, the main to drive up to the monastery. In 2004 Töwkhön was figure and first monastic head of Mongolian included on the list of the World’s Cultural Heritage Buddhism. Situated in an enchanted place, it is one Sites thanks to its cultural importance and the natural of the most frequented pilgrimage sites in Mongolia beauties of the Orkhon River Valley area. today. During the purges in 1937–38, there were mass Information on the monastery is to be found mainly executions of lamas, the 1000 Mongolian monasteries in books on Mongolian architecture and historical which then existed were closed and most of them sites, although there are also some scattered data totally destroyed. Religion was revived only after on the history of its foundation in publications on 1990, with the very few remaining temple buildings Öndör Gegeen’s life. In his atlas which shows 941 restored and new temples erected at the former sites monasteries and temples that existed in the past in of the ruined monasteries or at the new province and Mongolia, Rinchen marked the site on his map of the subprovince centers. Öwörkhangai monasteries as Töwkhön khiid (No. -
The Spread of Hindu-Arabic Numerals in the European Tradition of Practical Mathematics (13 Th -16 Th Centuries)
Figuring Out: The Spread of Hindu-Arabic Numerals in the European Tradition of Practical Mathematics (13 th -16 th centuries) Raffaele Danna PhD Candidate Faculty of History, University of Cambridge [email protected] CWPESH no. 35 1 Abstract: The paper contributes to the literature focusing on the role of ideas, practices and human capital in pre-modern European economic development. It argues that studying the spread of Hindu- Arabic numerals among European practitioners allows to open up a perspective on a progressive transmission of useful knowledge from the commercial revolution to the early modern period. The analysis is based on an original database recording detailed information on over 1200 texts, both manuscript and printed. This database provides the most detailed reconstruction available of the European tradition of practical arithmetic from the late 13 th to the end of the 16 th century. It can be argued that this is the tradition which drove the adoption of Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe. The dataset is analysed with statistical and spatial tools. Since the spread of these texts is grounded on inland patterns, the evidence suggests that a continuous transmission of useful knowledge may have played a role during the shift of the core of European trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. 2 Introduction Given their almost universal diffusion, Hindu-Arabic numerals can easily be taken for granted. Nevertheless, for a long stretch of European history numbers have been represented using Roman numerals, as the positional numeral system reached western Europe at a relatively late stage. This paper provides new evidence to reconstruct the transition of European practitioners from Roman to Hindu-Arabic numerals. -
General Historical and Analytical / Writing Systems: Recent Script
9 Writing systems Edited by Elena Bashir 9,1. Introduction By Elena Bashir The relations between spoken language and the visual symbols (graphemes) used to represent it are complex. Orthographies can be thought of as situated on a con- tinuum from “deep” — systems in which there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the sounds of the language and its graphemes — to “shallow” — systems in which the relationship between sounds and graphemes is regular and trans- parent (see Roberts & Joyce 2012 for a recent discussion). In orthographies for Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages based on the Arabic script and writing system, the retention of historical spellings for words of Arabic or Persian origin increases the orthographic depth of these systems. Decisions on how to write a language always carry historical, cultural, and political meaning. Debates about orthography usually focus on such issues rather than on linguistic analysis; this can be seen in Pakistan, for example, in discussions regarding orthography for Kalasha, Wakhi, or Balti, and in Afghanistan regarding Wakhi or Pashai. Questions of orthography are intertwined with language ideology, language planning activities, and goals like literacy or standardization. Woolard 1998, Brandt 2014, and Sebba 2007 are valuable treatments of such issues. In Section 9.2, Stefan Baums discusses the historical development and general characteristics of the (non Perso-Arabic) writing systems used for South Asian languages, and his Section 9.3 deals with recent research on alphasyllabic writing systems, script-related literacy and language-learning studies, representation of South Asian languages in Unicode, and recent debates about the Indus Valley inscriptions. -
3 Writing Systems
Writing Systems 43 3 Writing Systems PETER T. DANIELS Chapters on writing systems are very rare in surveys of linguistics – Trager (1974) and Mountford (1990) are the only ones that come to mind. For a cen- tury or so – since the realization that unwritten languages are as legitimate a field of study, and perhaps a more important one, than the world’s handful of literary languages – writing systems were (rightly) seen as secondary to phonological systems and (wrongly) set aside as unworthy of study or at best irrelevant to spoken language. The one exception was I. J. Gelb’s attempt (1952, reissued with additions and corrections 1963) to create a theory of writ- ing informed by the linguistics of his time. Gelb said that what he wrote was meant to be the first word, not the last word, on the subject, but no successors appeared until after his death in 1985.1 Although there have been few lin- guistic explorations of writing, a number of encyclopedic compilations have appeared, concerned largely with the historical development and diffusion of writing,2 though various popularizations, both new and old, tend to be less than accurate (Daniels 2000). Daniels and Bright (1996; The World’s Writing Systems: hereafter WWS) includes theoretical and historical materials but is primarily descriptive, providing for most contemporary and some earlier scripts information (not previously gathered together) on how they represent (the sounds of) the languages they record. This chapter begins with a historical-descriptive survey of the world’s writ- ing systems, and elements of a theory of writing follow. -
Uma Institute for Tibetan Studies Tibetan-Sanskrit-English Bibliography with BDRC Digital Reprint References
Uma Institute for Tibetan Studies Tibetan-Sanskrit-English Bibliography with BDRC Digital Reprint References Compiled by William Magee In collaboration with the Translators UMA INSTITUTE FOR TIBETAN STUDIES UMA Institute Bibliography UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies Tibetan-Sanskrit-English Bibliography With BDRC Digital Reprint References Compiled by William Magee In collaboration with the UMA Translators UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies uma-tibet.org Education in Compassion and Wisdom UMA Great Books Translation Project Supported by generous grants from the Yeshe Khorlo Foundation, the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Fund, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and a bequest from Daniel E. Perdue This bibliography, with references to digital reprints of Tibetan texts available for download at the Buddhist Digital Resource Cen- ter (www.tbrc.org), is compiled from bibliographies in the UMA In- stitute Great Books Translation Project. The project focuses on Great Indian Books and Tibetan commentaries from the Go-mang College syllabus as well as a related theme on the fundamental in- nate mind of clear light in Tantric traditions. A feature of the Project is the usage of consistent vocabulary and format throughout the translations. Publications available online without cost under a Creative Com- mons License with the understanding that downloaded material must be distributed for free: http://uma-tibet.org. UMA stands for Union of the Modern and the Ancient (gsar rnying zung ’jug khang). The UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies 7330 Harris Mountain Lane Dyke, VA 22935-1008 USA Version: October, 2018 ISBN Library of Congress Control Number: Magee, William (1949-) et al.