From: Andrew C. West (andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 08 2005 - 06:59:03 CST
On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 17:05:27 +0000, Christopher Fynn wrote:
>
> Although Sanskrit is now usually published in Devanagri - scholars in
> different parts of India often write it in their local script - (e.g.
> Kannada script if they are from Mysore). This includes most of the scripts
> used in India. Sanskrit is still spoken in a few Brahmin villages (e.g.
> Malkote in Karnataka) and in religious institutions - and it is one of the
> official languages of India. (I have a nice book on modern spoken Sanskrit
> which includes Sanskrit words for things like cinema). Sanskrit is also
> written in Newar (Nepal lipi), Ranjana, and, to some extent, Tibetan. Some
> critical editions of Sanskrit texts are published in Latin script.
I agree with Chris that Sanskrit and Pali would probably come top the list. In
addition to the various Indic scripts that are used to write Sanskrit, almost
all the central Asian Brahmic scripts were used to write Sanskrit to some
degree, as well as 'Phags-pa and other non-Brahmic scripts such as Kharoshthi,
Mongolian, Tangut and even Han.
Mind you, if you're not too fussy about what qualifies as a "script" then
English could well top the charts. In addition to Latin, Runic, Shavian and
Deseret (those Unicode-encoded scripts that have been used to write English)
there must be dozens or even hundreds of cryptic, mystic, fantasy and phonetic
scripts that have been invented over the last few hundred years, and every year
sees more and more new examples.
Andrew
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