Re: Kacc 10 revisited

George,

Please keep in mind that Ole and myself do not maintain that this
verse is a masterpiece of lucid reasoning --on the contrary, it now
appears out-of-place and out-of-order in the Kaccayana-Vyakarana that
exists today.

This is hardly unique in the text; we have a large number of verses
that are in the wrong place, for the wrong reason --and make little
sense in their current context.

However, the specific claim that "below" here really means
"underneath" (rather than "at the beginning, etc.) does indeed seem
entirely true and correct to me.

> One might imagine, if Vararuci composed in an oral context, that
> the terminology influenced the development of orthography, rather than the reverse.

No.

That's just chronologically impossible.  Even ancient Sinhala puts a
subjoined "r" beneath in the sequence "tr", "br" (etc.) from a very
early date; in South-East Asia, it is already found in the earliest
imaginable Pyu and Oc-Eo insciptions.  No-homogenous, stacked
consonant clusters go back to Ashoka (although he omits homogenous
double consonants in general, such as "tt", "kk", etc.) and (as I
vaguely recall) these can be found even the pre-Ashokan inscriptions
of Sri Lanka.

> (ii) Conversely, sandhi affects vowels in exactly the same way when preceded by single
> consonants as when preceded by clusters.

No.

As in English, Pali has rules that concern the different quality of
vowels following after a single consonant vs. a geminate cluster
(viz., long vs. short).  Thus all the rules about how doubling a
consonant can shorten the vowel following; similarly, a geminate
cluster can define the vowel following, but this is more likely to be
important in discussing derivation from a root, etymology, etc.

E.M.