From: Antoine Leca (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Fri Apr 29 2005 - 03:39:26 CST
Naga Ganesan wrote
> Quite simply, A. Nakanishi is wrong in stating the rules (3)
> and (5) as far as Tamil script is formulated.
Here you are speaking about a script.
> Tamil grammar,
The /grammar/ of a /script/ is a tangential concept, IMHO.
> chief amidst Darvidian languages and,
> one of the two classical languages
> of India the other being Sanskrit,
Well here we are not speaking about scripts any more.
Sanskrit is not a script, you know that much better than I do. I usually
wrote Sanskrit using the Latin script, and then there are certainly neither
inherent a vowel nor conjunct then.
Similarly, it is possible to write Sanskrit using the so-called Tamil
Grantha script; whether it should be considered different from the Tamil
script when it comes to Unicode is an open question, yet there is no real
doubt the Grantha script derives from the Tamil script as used (long ago)
for the Dravidian languages.
> The use of the virAma in Sanskrit [...] not to be
> found in the texts of Sanskrit grammarians. In those works, the term
> virAma does exist, but it marks the end of an utterance cf. virAmo
> 'vasAnam (Panini 1.4. 110),
As far as I known Sanskrit was not written when Pāṇini (பாணிநி, पाणिनि) was
supposedly designing his grammar. In fact, there is a lot of facts in the
way Aṣṭādhyāyī (அஷ்டாத்யயி, अष्टाध्ययि) is conceived that indicates it was
targetted at oral teaching rather than written. So any reference to Pāṇini
while discussing scripts artefacts appears strange to me.
Antoine
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