Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 20:06 -0500 2001-11-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >The best example is Brahmi; I used "abugida" because (a) it fits into
> >the sequence abjad/alphabet/... nicely and (b) no one could come up with
> >a Sanskrit-based word that was manageable -- the best Bill could do was
> >something that started with "akshara" and went on for a lot more
> >syllables (something like 'garland of letters').
>
> aksharasamâmnâya is glossed 'alphabet' in Monier-Williams.
> Aksharanyâsa is 'an array of syllables or letters; the alphabet'.

So howcome no one mentioned the latter when I was looking for a name for
the category?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...