Burmese/Lanna/Lao -Pali orthgrahic issue

This is a rather odd bit of research I attempted.  For some reason
some scholars in Burma are insisting that Pali & Sanskrit (in Burmese
script) require the superscript version of "y", "r", etc., in
subscript position (instead of the special subscript "y", "r", etc.)
--and are trying to change the Unicode standard.

I wrote below what I could figure out about this; the person to ask
would be Harald Hundius --perhaps I'll pester him about it sometime.
Still, I'm reasonably confident that I know what little there is to
know about the issue so far as Pali is concerned; I have *no idea*
what strange orthographic practices modern Sanskrit publications may
employ in Burma (I've never seen one!).
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   I spent two hours at the library looking into this.

   I would tend to conclude that (1) the issue of using superscript
form in subscript position (for the writing of Sanskrit) has only
arisen in the past century or two (i.e., with the advent of modern
printing, and transcription of Sk. texts into Burmese), & (2) the
source of the orthographic issue is in the inconsistent vernacular use
of superscript forms in subscript position, as can still be seen with
Lanna, Lao-Tham (and, I believe, Shan?) in suggesting medial vowels,
or changing the significance of a medial or final consonant.  Note,
e.g., Lanna's use of both a subscript "v" and a superscript "v" in
subscript position (Burmese doesn't have this, nor could it ever be
used for Pali in Lanna script); in Lanna this was one means of
distinguishing the medial "v" from its other consonant/semivowel
sounds (modern Lao doesn't make any such orthographic distinction
--the one non-phonetic element of the modern script!).

   It *may* be that the authors of the proposal are describing the
issue as Pali/Sanskrit related for political convenience --or it may
be out of genuine ignorance --or it may be related to classical hybrid
texts.  I am certainly not aware of any standard for using superscript
glyphs in subscript position for Burmese-script Sanskrit; *however*,
this may well have evolved in the past 100 years, as typesetters
struggled to render Sk. in Burmese type --the former tradition (right
into the 20th century) in Burma did use a mainland-Indic script (as I
digress to show below).

   Nihar-ranjan Ray's _Sanskrit Buddhism in Burma_, 1936, contained
little that was of use (orthographically) aside from two negative
statements, to the effect that the Sanskrit tradition in Burma was
largely/wholly written in Nagari & Bengali script until very recently.
  pg. 32: "... whatever the language may be [viz., Sk., Pali, or a mix
of the two], the script is always the same; it is mediaevil Nagari and
proto-Bengali of the period [viz., 9th-13th c.]"
   pg. 34: (following Forschammer's findings in the 1880s) "Sanskrit
literature in Burma [is] written on paper like India [viz.,] with
Nagari and Bengali characters."

   I myself had rather under-estimated the importance of these scripts
in the recent history of Burma; it would seem that transcription of
Sanskrit into modern Burmese orthography is a modern Burmese
pre-occupation.  Thus, the important hints here will not be found in
the old inscriptions (which is where both of us have been looking).
It seems to me that in antiquity the only use for this
super-/sub-script phenomenon would be (e.g.) to express a sequence
like "taya" or "tara" in a single glyph, by putting the superscript
form in a subscript position (i.e., as distinguishable from "tya" &
"tra" using "proper subscripts").  This is certainly a common
phenomenon in Lao-Tham, and, I would assume something similar could be
found in Upper Burma for vernacular and mixed texts; but there is no
_prima facie_ connection or origin related to Sanskrit.  I think the
orthographic practice was primarily vernacular, and has (perhaps) come
to be used to render Sanskrit in the modern period.  One would expect
to find this sort of thing in a hybrid Lao-Pali text, but not in pure
Pali; I really have never looked at hybrid Burmese-Pali texts, but
there may be something similar.  I have certainly spent a lot of time
with Burmese "Pure Pali" sources, and, as you say, the issue does not
exist there --nor in pure Pali inscriptions.

   But you may well say "What about the Myazedi inscription?"  Indeed,
what about it?  Some of the earliest Sanskrit inscriptions found in
the greater Burmese area are written in something like Pyu, but this
is of very little salience to the practical question you have raised
--as the script used (e.g.) at Myazedi cannot practically be
considered commensurable with modern Burmese.  Be that as it may, the
Burmese face of said inscription (not the Pali) has a few superscripts
in subscript position: e.g. _Epigraphica Birmanica_. Vol. 1, pg. 24
note 3 & 25 note 1.  These seem to affirm my suspicion that the issue
is vernacular (not Palic/Sanskritic) in nature.  You and I are both
fairly familiar with Pyu & early Mon orthography in Pali & Sk.; I
don't see any need to digress on subscript forms in these
inscriptions, as you already know the facts.  Similarly, the tendency
in all Khmer/Khom/Pallava Sk. was to use more specialized subscripts
than are at present found --i.e., generally, modern Burmese uses more
subscripts that are identical to superscripts than the ancient
Sk./Pali epigraphical forms.  For example, consider the methods of
rendering "ppa" & "ppha" in all of the ancient scripts of the region
vs. modern Burmese; we could describe the modern Burmese form as one
of "putting superscript forms in subscript position" --and this may
have been the origin of what is now the "correct" practice in Burmese
Pali.  By contrast, a Khmer-Pali text has specialized subscripts for
all combinations; as I have already said repeatedly, mixed texts
(e.g., Lanna) do sometimes present us with a contrast between proper
subscripts (closely resembling the modern Khmer) and superscript forms
in subscript position (closely resembling the modern Burmese).  All of
this combines to lend weight to my assumption that the issue is more
modern in origin than I at first suspected.

   Staring at the Lao-Tham script edition of the Pali D.N.1, I am
reminded that some limited use of superscripts in subscript positions
has crept into these texts by way of scribal confusion/error --and the
latter errors have sometimes become locally deemed as correct (though
not in any major Burmese or Mon script Pali edition I have ever seen
...).  I am thinking, for instance, of subscript ~n ("nya"), viz.,
where the second ~n in a pair is written below the first, but, in
fact, the first is already a double form --this actually would be four
~n sounds, but it is read as two in (some) Lao-Tham scripts.  It is
inconsistent, and, in principle, can be considered erroneous; one can
sometimes find a triple ~n form in Burmese sources stemming from
similar confusion (but the latter is not a subscript issue).

   So: to make a long story short, the question of including these
special forms "makes sense" to me in terms of vernacular and
pseudo-classical languages of the region, but I have *NO IDEA* why it
has been proposed as an issue for Pali & Sanskrit transcription.  I
could easily imagine that it is an issue for Shan; but if anyone tells
you that "correct" Pali eschews the subscript form of "y" to write
instead superscript "y" in a subscript position ... I think you're
justified in asking where they get that idea from.

E.M.