Re: ~n/.n

Dear Eisel,

>>Geiger (Pali Grammar para 50) writes:1. ''sn becomes ~nh (Pkt .nh):
>>pa~nha (AMg pa.nha) `question' = Skt pra''sna; pa~nhipa.n.nii (sic! not
>>pa.nhi-) (name of a plant) Abh 584 = Skt p.r''snipar.nii.
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>Although interesting, I do not think this is directly related.
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It might be, because it seems that in Prakrit .nh occured rather than ~nh.

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>>Maybe the .nh in pa.nhitabba.m in the Siam Nikaaya MSS, and in the
>>occurence Geiger disapproved of, is a survival from an older strata of
>>the Pali language.
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>I think it is far more likely a question of modern orthography, and
>not of historical development of the underlying language; the initial
>impression that I was working from was that *modern* Sinhalese
>orthography allows/encourages the confusion of ".nh" vs. "~nh" --thus,
>I was expecting the confusion would be imposed from the modern
>vernacular onto the Pali.  The connection to Thailand may be
>extraneous (in this case); I assume the Siam Nikaya MS (that you have
>described) are in Sinhalese script.  My assumption would be that the
>.nh/~nh error would have arised in transcription, not from the Thai
>source --but, as I have said, this assumption is (so far) without
>empirical basis.
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Can you please give your *modern* sources? I need to actually see what
you are writing about. Please give some modern  vernacular Sinhalese
words which contain .nh and ~nh.

Regarding -pa.nhi- in the Siyam Nikaya MSS. These are not modern, they
are about 200-250 years old. I failed to make clear that it is found in
a Siamese Khom script MS at the Vijasundara Vihara in Kandy. It also
occurs in a MS at a temple near Kandy, which is no doubt a copy of a
Thai MS, and it is found in Dickson's edition of the Patim, which is
based on Malwatte Siyam Nikaya MS. Therefore there is an unambiguous
Siamese connection. Is there a confusion between .nh and ~nh in
Indochinese scripts?

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>>The characters .n and ~n are quite different in
>>Sinhala ...
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>I agree, but there seems to be a convention (perhaps euphonic?) in the
>modern vernacular of substituting .n for ~n in some circumstances.  In
>the same way that the (modern vernacular) Sinhalese convention of
>using the anuswara instead of the velar 'n has been imposed on Pali, I
>assumed that this might also happen with ~nh in Sinhalese Pali.
>However, I was wondering how rare (or how common) it might be --if it
>is regarded as an error at all.
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Even in Pali, the combination ~nh is rare, it only occurs in the words
pa~nha and sa~nhita (disregarding the consonant sandhis with hi). In
Sinhala it probably is rare too because the Sinhalese tend to use
Sanskritised words instead of Pali words. For pa~nha they use
pra''snaya. However, in the dictionary, there is also another word for
pra''snaya, pae.na, which might be from a Prakrit.
I wonder how rare the combination .nh is in Sinhala, if it exists at
all, for example, for u.nha, ''heat'', they use u.na or u''s.na.
Maybe because of its

>Many of the special combined consonants in Sinhalese orthography have
>a "disputed applicability" to Pali.  The sythentically combined "mba"
>glyph vs. the ligatured "mba" is an example of this --i.e., the former
>is reserved for the vernacular, although actually many printed
>editions disregard this and use either glyph interchangeably (again,
>just like the distinction between anuswara & the velar 'n being
>ignored!).  Thus, part of the reason for my question is that I did not
>know if the distinction between ".nh / ~nh" was regarded as fixed
>--i.e., if the substitution described would be considered an error, or
>acceptable orthography (because of approximation to modern Sinhalese).
>
>E.M.
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