L2/01-007 Subject: Iranianist Meeting Report Source: Carl-Martin Bunz cm.bunz@rz.uni-sb.de Date: 12/21/2000 After a quite difficult review process, the report of the Paris meeting of Iranianists held in the beginning of November, finally has been approved by all the participants and now can be transmitted to Unicode. Here enclosed you find the text of the report. Tell me please if the UTC wants to receive this report in a different form (e.g. Word file). Wishing you a merry Christmas, Carl-Martin. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Meeting Report Unité Mixte de Recherche 7528 - "Monde iranien" (CNRS - Sorbonne Nouvelle - INaLCO - EPHE) Symposium "L'encodage de systèmes d'écriture iraniens dans Unicode" "Encoding Iranian Scripts in Unicode" 4 novembre 2000 --- November 4, 2000 At this conference organised by the research team of "Monde iranien" and with the moral support of the "Societas Iranologica Europaea" (SIE) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris on 4 November 2000, an international group of specialists met to discuss the foundations of an adaptation of Unicode to scripts used for Old and Middle Iranian languages. The group agreed upon the following points: 1) Bactrian In view of the fact that the Bactrian writing system uses the Greek repertoire with only a few additional characters, there is, in accordance with the Unicode encoding policy, no need for establishing a separate encoding. Therefore, the specialists group will prepare a proposal for additional characters to be encoded in the Greek block. 2) Old Persian cuneiform The Old Persian cuneiform script is ready for encoding. An agreement was reached that an encoding proposal can be drawn up without prior paleographic revision of the extant script documents or the photographs of these documents, because it is unlikely that new distinctive signs, i.e. encodable as characters, will be found. As to the arrangement of the encoding, the experts agreed to treat Old Persian cuneiform as a syllabary like the Japanese systems or the Brahmic scripts. Old Persian cuneiform is a historical script which should be allocated to Plane 1. 3) Avestan There are several reasons for encoding Avestan separately. First it is a phonetic character repertoire created for a special purpose, second the repertoire widely exceeds the framework of the historically underlying Aramaic (i.e. Semitic) type scripts, third there is a typographic tradition (lead types and computerized fonts), and fourth the Avestan script plays an important role in the religious life of the Zoroastrians. The latter argument necessitates, in accordance with the Unicode policy, allocating Avestan to Plane 0 / BMP. In the domain of Avestan, paleographic research is at a preliminary stage only, so that for the time being not every detail of the graphemic analysis can be settled with certainty. Nevertheless the group agreed that an intermediate strategy has to be followed, in order to deliver an Avestan encoding proposal within an acceptable period of time so as to serve both the user community (represented in the group) and the Unicode idea. A thoroughly elaborated proposal based on an exhaustive examination of the manuscripts should be presented only after a couple of years. The proposal will be maximal in the sense that it is proposed to treat script units whose character status is debatable at present as characters. Moreover, the proposal will take into account the current usage of the script in Zoroastrian religious life. 4) Pahlavi (Book-Pahlavi) To meet the special difficulties Book-Pahlavi tradition provides with respect to finding an encoding ratio, the group accepted the suggestion of Jost Gippert to design a code representation of the script which is a full (maximal) encoding, based on both graphemic and phonemic distinctions, and which comprises cover symbols that enable (a) a minimal representation of the graphemes, and (b) a shape oriented encoding, where the code elements represent the graphically distinctive letter forms. The status of the Pahlavi script as a living script used in the Zoroastrian community is still debated. This is why a definitive proposal for the allocation of the Pahlavi script cannot yet be made. 5) Inscriptional Alphabets (Middle Persian, Parthian) and Sogdian vs. Aramaic The inscriptional alphabets used for Middle Persian and Parthian and the Sogdian script being based on the Aramaic script and mappable onto it, no special code area will be needed for them once the encoding of Aramaic has been decided upon. 6) Manichaean and Christian Sogdian Scripts The Manichaean script and the Christian Sogdian script being closely related to the Syriac Estrangelo script and mappable onto it to a large extent, unification with the existing Syriac block in Plane 0 / BMP should be envisaged. The specialist group will provide a proposal for additional characters to be encoded in the Syriac block. 7) Khotanese Script (Brahmic) Since Khotanese is a Brahmic script of the Turkestan type, the discussion on the encoding issues of this script presupposes general considerations of the still unsolved problem how the hundreds of historic Brahmi variants attested in India and elsewhere should be treated in Unicode which, as an international encoding standard, has paid special attention to political and cultural requirements in India. The group recommends drawing up a unified encoding for the Turkestan Brahmi types which could cover all attested variants no matter which language is represented (Khotanese, Tumshuqese, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Tocharian, Old Uighur). Of course, this unified block will contain additional special characters that are part of the language specific repertoires. List of participants: Carl-Martin Bunz, M.A., Research Assistant, Institute of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics and Indo-Iranian Studies, Dept. 3.5, University of Saarland, Germany; Unicode initiative of TITUS project Prof. Raimond Doctor, Center for Development of Advanced Computerising (CDAC), University of Poona, India Dr. Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, Manichaean Dictionary Project - Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge, Great Britain Prof. Dr. Jost Gippert, Professor of General Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, Leader of TITUS project, University of Frankfurt/Main, Germany Dr. Philip Huyse, Chargé de Recherche, CNRS - Monde Iranien, France; Secretary of the Societas Iranologica Europaea Prof. Mauro Maggi, Professor of Indo-Iranian Philology, Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici , Istituto Universitario Orientale (Naples), Italy Dr. Claudius Naumann, Turfanforschung - Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, Germany Dr. Eric Phalippou, Chargé de conférences, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE, Ve section), Sciences religieuses, France Prof. Georges-Jean Pinault, Directeur d'études, Philologie bouddhique et Asie centrale, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE, IVe section), Sciences historiques et philologiques, France Prof. Nicholas Sims-Williams, FBA, Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies; Old and Middle Iranian languages; Indo-European comparative philology; History of Central Asia; School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, Great Britain ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -------------------------------------- Carl-Martin Bunz, M.A. Institute of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics and Indo-Iranian Studies Dept. 3.5 University of Saarland P.O. Box 15 11 50 D-66041 Saarbruecken Germany Tel. +49-(0)681-302-2744 /-2304 Fax +49-(0)681-302-4234 -------------------------------------- 3