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Varieties of Grantha Script: the Date and Place of Origin of Manuscripts Saraju Rath

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Varieties of Grantha Script: the Date and Place of Origin of Manuscripts Saraju Rath varieties of grantha script 187 CHAPTER TEN VariETIES OF GranTha ScripT: THE daTE and placE OF Origin OF manuscripTS Saraju Rath 1. Introduction 1.1 The development and, eventually, wide-spread use of grantha1 script in the southern part of the Indian subcontinent form a constitu- tive part of the extensive manuscript culture in the Indian world and in Asia, especially South and South-East Asia. The beginnings of grantha script around one and a half millennium ago are no more directly accessible but impressive fragments of its material basis and traces of its vibrant life history are still visible. Although the available material, in the form of inscriptions and even more in the form of manuscripts, is abundant, its detailed examination has hardly begun. Early works on Indian scripts such as the one by Burnell (1878) pro- vide the basics only on grantha next to several other scripts of South India. Recent publications specifically devoted to grantha2 do not intend to be more than introductions and study aids for beginners. In this article it is my aim to clarify, in the framework of a synthetic over- view, distinctive characteristics of varieties and stages of development of the grantha script that have so far not been noted or that have remained vague and ambiguous. For this I will not rely on tables of hand-drawn characters (as is mostly done in recent publications on grantha) but on characters that are directly taken from manuscripts from different periods. 1.2 Texts in the Sanskrit language, transmitted and often also pro- duced in South India, appear in different scripts such as telugu, kan- naḍa, grantha, nandināgarī and malayalam. Among these scripts, 1 Because I have to refer to a few scripts that have the same names as the lan- guage to which they primarily belong, script names in this article will start in small case and language names in capital : telugu script—Telugu language. 2 Grünendahl 2001, Visalakshy 2003. 188 saraju rath grantha occupies a major position as this is the only script specially designed to write Sanskrit (and Vedic) texts, including royal records and documents in the southern states of the Indian subcontinent. Here, grantha is the transregional script employed for texts in the Sanskrit language next to other scripts which are preferably used for other languages and vernaculars: tamil for Tamil, telugu for Telugu, etc. Some of these scripts, for instance telugu, are suitable for writing Sanskrit and have actually been employed for that purpose next to the writing of the corresponding regional language. Other scripts such as tamil, are incapable of distinctively representing all sounds of Sanskrit3 and are hence in need of grantha for the adequate representation of these sounds. Just as Sanskrit as language of several sciences, of litera- ture and of brahmanical and buddhist religious texts is normally part of a bilingual situation—speakers in south India thus typically com- bine knowledge of Sanskrit with an intimate familiarity with Tamil, Telugu, etc.—like that the grantha script in south India is normally part of a biscriptual situation in which grantha combines with tamil, telugu scripts etc.4 It should hence not be a matter of surprise that grantha shows regional differences parallel with the distinct nature of the other scripts with which it stands in a biscriptual relation. More- over, grantha has gone through a number of relatively clearly identifi- able stages of development, from the first half of the first millennium ce till early modern times.5 Among the multifaceted changes in style and calligraphy of the characters of the different varieties of the script, which are the ones that may serve to determine the relative date of a grantha manuscript ? 1.3 Since especially South Indian manuscripts normally lack any precise statement about the date of their production, indications that can be derived from subsequent changes in the style and calligraphy of the script-varieties are very much needed for a chronological determination of available manuscripts. Even in the very limited number of cases their colophon does contain a date, the system of dating usually gives the Saṁvatsara year which follows a 60-year cycle6 3 For example, tamil alphabet ka represents Sanskrit kha, ga and gha. 4 For the moment we will here not take into account the later use of devanāgarī in South India, which will make the situation multi-scriptual. 5 Its origins are therefore contemporary with those of siddhamātkā and early nāgarī in the middle and northern part of the Indian subcontinent (Rath 2006). 6 See for telugu manuscripts, Sarma’s article on “From my Grandfather’s chest of palmleaf Books” in the present volume..
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