Recently I was practicing my Pali pronunciation using the Visaakhaaya-vatthu
in the Dhammapada Commentary edited by HC Norman, 1970. On page 389 I
noticed a designation for the guttural nasal consonant that I had never seen
before. Usually it is written using an "n" with a dot over it. Here it had
a line over it. (ala-nkato, 3rd line from the bottom; raaja-nga.ne, 6th line
from the bottom) I just assumed this was an alternate way to write it.
But then I noticed that the last word in the 10th line, kinkaara.naa, was
written with a hooked "n". Now, I think I have figured out that when the
guttural nasal sound precedes a semi-vowel or the sibilant, it is written as
a pure nasal, the rest of the time it is written with the consonant nasal.
Can anyone give me some insight into this phenomenon? Were the early
editions simply a little inconsistent, or is there some deeper meaning that
I can't see.