84: manuscript spelling

manuscript spellingmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1712

There are some differences between the way Sanskrit is spelled in old manuscripts, and the way it's spelled nowadays in printed books.

The pronunciation has not changed at all.

(A) Old manuscripts use no spaces between words. But nowadays a space is written after words that end in vowels, topdot, or dotdot. Unless it would be an ugly space .

(B) Rules acorahA, anacica and others allow doubling certain consonants optionally. Those optional lengthened sounds are nowadays written as single, but in manuscript you will often find those doublings spelled out.

(D) cch was sometimes written ch. For instance, they'd write gachati but still read it aloud as gacchati.

(E) You'll find that sometimes sandhi rules are not obeyed. Particularly at mid-verse, and after calling. See ch cch spelling .

(F) Many scribes wrote all b as v. Most likely because they pronounced b and v the same way. In some manuscripts, b and v appear swapped.

(G) The consonant m in manuscripts is written as a topdot when a pause follows (provided that the pause is written as a space, stick, or double stick).

(H) In old manuscripts, in- word nasal sounds that are before a similar Jay were almost always written with a topdot (sometimes, randomly, with their proper nasal letter). The crazy spelling rule says that a nasal before a Jay must be spelled with a topdot if the nasal sound was made by monusvA and anusvA, but with its proper letter otherwise.

ch cch spellingmmmmmmmmm ^ M+ C- 1713

For reasons that are long to explain, it appears that pANini thought that mAchidaH "do not cut!" and mAcchidaH "do not cut!" were two different pronunciations of the same sentence, both allowed by the rules.

In spite of that, it appears to be the case that, since as far as anyone can remember, the sound that is spelled acha is always pronounced as the sound that is spelled accha -- both are a very very strongly aspirated version of aca, that takes the same time to say as attha, aggha, addha.

This is why, in old manuscripts, you will find spellings like gachati, even in places where it is clear from the meter that the real pronunciation was gacchati. This happens because they always read aloud cha as if it were ccha.

In modern printing, however, you will find ccha or cha in the spelling not chosen randomly, but depending on what the pANini rules say. Yet the cha is always pronounced ccha anyway. As far as I know.

Back to manuscript spelling .

Pronunciation of H.mmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1714

Obsolete. See about the dotdot letter .

Before pause, kS or ts, pronounce H as a visarga sound, or, if you cannot, as an h plus echo .

Always pronounce Hz HS Hs as zz SS ss. Even if a space is in between.

Before k (that is not kS) or kh, pronounce H as K, visarga, or h plus echo .

Before p or ph, pronounce H as F, visarga, or h plus echo .

Before anything else, H is a misspelling.

About the topdot letter.mmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1715

The topdot, a.k.a " M letter", is one of two letters that have different sounds (the other one is the dotdot, a.k.a " H letter").

I call it topdot because, in some alphabets, it looks like a dot written on top of a letter. In Bengali script it looks like a small circle with a backslash under it, and it is written after another letter.

The topdot always follows a vowel.

(1) If the M letter appears before of any of the twenty-five Jay, it represents the sound of the most-alike nasal letter. So you must always pronounce --

zaMkaraH as zaGkaraH

saMdhiH as sandhiH

kuMbhaH as kumbhaH

saMgaH as saGgaH

paMca as paJca

pAMDuH as pANDuH

The last four (kuMbhaH etc) are nowadays considered misspellings, because their M is not wordfinal. They must be spelled kumbhaH etc. But you will find them everywhere spelled both ways.

When there is a space in between, you still do the same thing --

always pronounce taM pazyAmi as tampazyAmi

taM dadAti as tandadAti

ayaM karoti as ayaGkaroti

zatruM dveSTi as zatrundveSTi

That only works if the M is in saMhitA. If you decide to make a pause in the middle of tanM dadAti, then the M turns into an m sound. So if you find taM pazyAmi written somewhere, you can read that

either in one breath as

tandadAti,

or as --

tam pause dadAti,

(2) If the M letter is before a yaN or a zal, pronounce it as an anusvAra sound.

An anusvAra sound can be a sort of mm, or a nasalized version of the previous vowel.

For instance, saMskRtam stands for either

sa + a~ + skRtam

sammskRtam

(3) All other topdot letters are before a vowel or a pause, and are misspellings for an m sound. So if someone wrote dadAti taM before a stick, you read that as dadAti tam, and then you pause.

Nowadays, many people believe that the only correct way of pronouncing what is printed as topdot is a lengthened mm sound. That belief is not too bad if the only thing you do with Sanskrit is praying while you read aloud from a well-printed sheet; in fact as far as I know it is likely to be kosher. But my students are warned that they'll get an F in the oral exam if they do that.

about the dotdot lettermmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1716

The dotdot is one of the two letters that can represent different sounds (the other such letter is the topdot).

In devanAgarI the dotdot looks like a colon, and in this website it looks like " H ".

According to pANini, the dotdot letter must be pronounced --

When before pause, as an H sound , NOT as h plus echo .

When it is in saMhitA --

When before ts or kS, as an H sound (see zarpare).

When before k kh, as either an H sound or K ( kupvoKkaFpauca).

When before p ph, as either an H sound or F ( kupvoKkaFpauca).

Elsewhere, the H is a mispelling and must be replaced with the correct sound.

When before a zar in saMhitA,

either as the same zar (see vAzari)

or as an H sound .

(I teach my students to use the same zar option only, never the H sound option. It comes out way easier. Using h plus echo plus zar IST GANTS FERBOTEN.)

According to vedic tradition --

When the dotdot letter is before a pause, it must be chanted as h plus echo . Otherwise do whatever your particular school of vedic recitation teaches. zrIgurubhyo namahAAA.

According to many kaliyuga teaching traditions,

You MUST pronounce all dotdot as h plus echo . Just ignore whatever pANini taught.

CRAZY SPELLING RULEmmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1719

The CRAZY SPELLING RULE says this --

" Spell the sound nd

(1) as topdot + d, if the n sound used to be a wordfinal m and later turned into an n sound because of monusvA and anusvA.

(2) as nd, otherwise. "

A simpler way of stating this rule is --

" spell the sound nd as Md whenever the pANini rules say that the pronunciation Md is optionally allowed, and as nd when the pronunciation nd is compulsory"

Please do not forget that pronouncing nd is compulsory in practice -- no matter the spelling, the pronunciation anusvAra + d is almost unheard of.

This rule has been used by editors of printed Sanskrit books since 1850 or so, give or take a century. Not being a pANini rule, you don't have to follow it; it is merely a general agreement of professors and proof editors.

In the age of the manuscripts, there was another rule in general use, which I encourage my students to use, even though it will get them an F in high school Sanskrit tests --

"Spell the sound nd however you feel like, either as nd or Md."

In this website I spell the n sounds that, according to the CRAZY SPELLING RULE, must written as n, this way --

tAn dRSTvA "after seeing them"

candraH "moon"

and spell those that are written as topdot this way --

tAnM dRSTvA "after seeing her"

sanMdhiH "junction"

So you have to remember that the blue n is spelled as a topdot, and that the blue n and the black n are both pronounced as n (when in saMhitA). If the blue n happens to be before a pause, pronounce it like m.

Of course, what I just said about nd also applies to the other twenty-four Clusters of nasal plus similar .

See also why I think this rule is crazy below.

Hs and ss in times of pANinimmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1721

In times of pANini, a sentence like tam + karoti ("he does it") could have two different pronunciations. Either you said taGMkaroti with a G sound, or you said taMkaroti with an anusvAra sound. Today no one is sure what that anusvAra sound was, but we can be certain that it was not G and not m, because otherwise pANini would not have bothered to make the rule vApadAntasya. The existence of that rule makes me think that in those times, some people always took the M option, other people always took the G option, and pANini thought that both styles were good.

Similarly, in sentences like rAmasH sIdati "rAma sits", some people said rAmassIdati with long s, and other people said rAmaHsIdati with a visarga sound followed by an s sound. So pANini included a vA in rule vAzari, to clarify that both ways of speaking are ok.

Hs and ss in medieval Sanskritmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1722

Now lets travel forward a couple thousand years into the middle ages, that is, the centuries in which all manuscripts were written. It appears that in those times, everybody pronounced taGkaroti and rAmassIdati because those are easier to say, and everybody wrote taMkaroti and rAmaHsIdati because those are easier to write in Indian scripts, the M being one dot in devanAgarI, and the H being two dots. So the sounds Mk and Hs disappeared from the spoken language, and people considered the letter combinations Mk and Hs just as an abbreviated spelling of the sounds Gk ss. In the manuscripts you can see that the scribes sometimes used Gk and ss, but mostly preferred Mk and Hs, and there was no fixed rule about when to use which.

Hs and ss todaymmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1723

In the 19th century, some Sanskrit scholars, seeing that in English words are always spelled in one way, get ashamed of seeing that in their manuscripts, Gk and Mk are used quite chaotically, and decide to make a spelling rule so that everybody can agree to always write the same way. So they decided that, from then on, the Gk sound that according to pANini, must always be pronounced Gk, will be spelled Gk, while the Gk sound that, according to pANini, may be pronounced either Gk or Mk, will be spelled Mk.

The same rule applies to ss. When the sound ss comes from vAzari, so that according to pANini it may be pronounced either Hs or ss, then it must be spelled Hs. But when according to pANini it must always be pronounced ss, then it must be spelled ss.

The problem with this rule is that it is quite difficult to apply in practice, as most Sanskrit speakers are not supposed to have any knowledge of the pANini grammar. This is why you will see the wrong spellings used mostly everywhere, even by people that talk Sanskrit fluently, and by those that can chant their prayers and stotras with no mistakes. So if you want to make sure that your book uses the "correct" spelling, you will have to hire a Sanskrit scholar to proofread your book and tell you if the correct spelling is zaGkara or zaMkara. Alternatively you might use a dictionary, but only if the dictionary gets these details right, which is not the case for all dictionaries.

I tell my students to not worry about this rule and allow them to use the spellings Mk and Hs always, even when they are technically incorrect. This saves thinking, and also ink. Sometimes it allows easier writing. And even cleaner printing, in cases like paGka.

Why I think this rule is crazy.mmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1724

The CRAZY SPELLING RULE is easy to state and to remember, but so complicated to apply in practice, that not even fluent speakers with a firm grasp of the grammar can apply it correctly in all cases.

Example. The correct spelling of the word pronounced zaGkara is zaMkara with M, not zaGkara. But you can only be sure of that if you know that zaGkara, which nowadays means "the god ziva" exclusively, was originally a compound of the rootnoun zam- with kara, meaning "peacemaker". If you don't know the etymology of the word you can't spell it correctly without looking it up.

Also, in these times of kaliyuga, most Sanskrit users are neither fluent, nor grammar-aware, nor willing to invest their time into looking up zaGkara in a dictionary to find out if the correct spelling is zaGkaraH with G or zaGMkaraH with topdot. That is why we find misspellings everywhere. Even in printed books, and in some dictionaries.

To add insult to injury, when I write words on my whiteboard, spelling them correctly with Roman letters, such as "zaMkaraH", and ask my students to read them aloud, there is always someone that says "shammkarahaaa" with a doubled m sound. Of course, at the end of the year, they can use devanAgarI correctly and can pronounce zaGMkaraH correctly with a G sound. But if I use the "incorrect" spelling zaGkaraH at the start, they suffer less and learn faster.

I frankly can't see what is wrong with the rule used in manuscripts, which was --

" Always pronounce Gk, spell that sound as Gk or Mk as you wish, and always read aloud Gk and Mk as Gk."

That rule makes a lot of sense if you are using an Indian alphabet AND you talk Sanskrit like most speakers do in these days of kaliyuga.

I teach my students that they must always pronounce Mk as Gk, that they should not worry about correct spelling, and that in the unlikely event that they are ever caught mispelling sandhiH or saGMgaH by some pedant, they should say "oopsie sorry", or apologize, or come out with some excuse. Worrying about spelling is a Western thing; worrying about correct pronunciation is an Indian thing, and far more important.

chunk 84: manuscript spelling