those are nice words. i prefer the word more commonly used in modern india,
as a sanksrit loan in all the indo-aryan languages, namely _aksharamâlâ_
'garland of syllables'. but i had to agree with daniels that it was too
long and unfamiliar to introduce as a neologism in our book. cheers; bill

>At 20:06 -0500 2001-11-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>>The best example is Brahmi; I used "abugida" because (a) it fits into
>>the sequence abjad/alphabet/... nicely and (b) no one could come up with
>>a Sanskrit-based word that was manageable -- the best Bill could do was
>>something that started with "akshara" and went on for a lot more
>>syllables (something like 'garland of letters').
>
>aksharasamâmnâya is glossed 'alphabet' in Monier-Williams.
>Aksharanyâsa is 'an array of syllables or letters; the alphabet'.
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