Re: viyoga (Kc 10) --comment

Contra:

> 1) In line with your interpretation of "adho.thita", the phrase "sara~nca
> upari katvaa" (and having made the vowel above) in Kacc-v 10 would therefore
> suggest that the vowel should be written above the adho.thita consonant.
> This, of course, wouldn't make sense ...

No no --it can make sense, as subscript consonants do not take on
"subscript" vowel markers, but, instead, vowels pertaining to the
subscript are written as if attached to the superscript.  If the
subscript consonant had a "i" vowel pertaining to it, this *would not*
be written above the subscript (viz., not in-between the super- &
subscript consonants!).  This is certainly the case in Lanna script,
resulting in a quite a confusing method of writing, with various
inconsistencies.

My vague understanding was that the south-indian system of writing
subscript consonants had similar ambiguities --from an outsider's
perspective.

> 2) Writing a consonant under a preceding one points to a conjunct of two or
> more consonants.

No no!  Dr. Pind isn't talking about compound consonants in the
Burmese fashion at all!  The point is that the final syllable of a
compounded *word* is "written below" (in a subscript) so that you have
a visual clue as to where the word-components break.  The final
sequence of the word before its compounding with the next word would
be written in a manner that does not silence the inherent vowel, but
might even have a distinct vowel sound for both the super- and
subscript consonants thusly "stacked".

This "orthographic praxis" is not in use in any of the Theravada
countries today, as Dr. Pind points out.  I believe it was used in
some of the old South-Indian inscriptions, but I honestly do not have
any good published source on this subject --nor am I likely to find
one here in Vientiane.

The usage in Lanna mentioned above is only for the vernacular, has
nothing to do with compound words, and may well have no historical
relation to the Indian original.

> The Nyaasa cites "so siilavaa" which has no
> conjunct as you can see. Here the antecedent consonant /s/ is, according to
> Kc 10, separated from the vowel /o/. In this case, under what could you
> write the adho.thita consonant /s/ ?

Although this may be a bad example (for the reason Pind has given,
viz., that the Nyaasa doesn't understand the verse in question) I will
use it to draw attention to precisely the point that you're missing,
Jim: in the writing systems in question you would write "so" with the
"sii" underneath it --both retain their vowels (i.e., it does not
become "ssii"!), and the vowel markers would (I believe) both be
written on the main script level.  The "ii" would not be horizontally
interposed between the top "so" and the subscripted "s" --not that I'm
aware of (but perhaps this is attested in some inscriptions??).

As noted, "sosiilavaa" may be a poor example.

E.M.