Re: Devanagari composing help needed

From: Ambarish Sridharanarayanan (unicode@ambarish.ksharanam.net)
Date: Thu Jun 07 2007 - 02:34:48 CDT

  • Next message: Marnen Laibow-Koser: "Re: Devanagari composing help needed"

    Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
    > On Jun 6, 2007, at 11:50 PM, Ambarish Sridharanarayanan wrote:
    >
    >> On 06 June 2007 at 23:36, Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
    >>
    >>> Yes, the second underlined character is definitely jña
    >>> (ज्ञ). I've never seen anything like the first, but my
    >>> guess is that it is ṣṭrī (ष्ट्री) -- but it
    >>> appears to have a virama underneath as well, which I don't
    >>> understand.
    >>
    >> The virama indicates that the 091f is a half-consonant (the
    >> inherent vowel having been suppressed). You don't see this often
    >> because most Devanagari consonants have half-forms and when they
    >> combine with the 0930, the resulting ligature has the half-form
    >> with the "forward-slash". 091f is one of those consonants without a
    >> half-form, so it needs an explicit virama.
    >
    > I'm aware of all this -- I would expect to see 091f (ṭa, ट) with
    > virama in a context such as ष्ट्र्य (ṣṭrya). The
    > thing that puzzles me, though, is why the ṣṭr ligature
    > (ष्ट्र) has *both a virama and a vowel sign*. In this case,
    > I wonder if the virama is superfluous.

    The virama is for the 091f; the vowel sign for the 0930. The cluster is thus
    ṣṭrī. Without the virama, it would be ṣṭarī.



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