--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:

> WHO IS ANDREW GLASS, AND WHAT IS HIS THESIS?

See his entry in http://depts.washington.edu/ebmp/people.php or visit
his web site - http://www.andrewglass.org . His MA thesis is entitled
'A Preliminary Study of Kharos.t.hi: Manuscript Paleography', and can
be found at http://www.andrewglass.org/downloads/Glass_2000.pdf .

>>> and Tocharian was usually written with Brahmi.

>> And the other script used was?

> YOU TELL ME.

I did.

>>> A quick glance through Salomon 1999 shows only clusters with r and
>>> y, plus one kS.

>> WWS p376 also gives <tv>, <rv>, <st> and <sp>.

> HE WAS NOT DISCUSSING GANDHARI THERE. A more appropriate source

would be A. H. Dani.

Table 30.8 of WWS, which gives examples of Kharoshthi consonant
clusters, does not seem to be called up by the text anywhere in the
chapter.

> I DON'T THINK I'VE EVER SEEN A CLAIM THAT KASHMIRI, OR OTHER DARDIC

LANGUAGES, WERE WRITTEN WITH KHAROSTHI?

OK, so you're telling me Gandhari is not a Dardic language. I'm now
confident that Gandhari had the -st- cluster without recourse to
Dardic languages, so whether Gandhari is Dardic or not does not matter
for this discussion.

>>> Pali isn't Prakrit, and I believe it's much later than Kharosthi.

>> Kharoshthi suvived at least into the 4th Century AD in Khotan. Pali
>> was already being written in Brahmi-derived scripts by then, even
>> if you exclude Ashoka's edicts.

> FINE. KHAROSTHI ISN'T BRAHMI-DERIVED.

Who said it was? You claimed that Pali was much later than
Kharoshthi. I'm saying that as Pali was being written before
Kharoshthi died out, a claim that there are Pali texts written using
Kharoshthi is not implausible on chronological grounds.

>> I agree that Pali isn't normally considered Prakrit, but some do
>> consider it as such. How do you reckon the language of Ashoka's
>> edicts?

> I HAVEN'T THE SLIGHTEST IDEA. THEY'RE WRITTEN WITH BRAHMI.

Not all of them - for example the Shahbazgarhi Rock Edicts are written
in the Kharoshthi script. The language of this set is identified as
Gandhari.

> I THINK YOU'RE CONFUSED ABOUT THE RELATION BETWEEN KHAROSTHI AND

BRAHMI, AND WHAT DOES JAVANESE HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? IT'S MANY,
MANY CENTURIES LATER.

Kharoshthi and Brahmi were perfectly capable of influencing one
another - scripts do. However, I find it perfectly plausible that
Brahmi is re-engineered Kharoshthi, and that there were no further
influences of Kharoshthi on Brahmi. Brahmi did influence Kharoshthi -
most noticeably, Kharoshthi seems to have borrowed vowel length marks
from Brahmi.

My main interest in this is in CVC orthographic units in Brahmi
scripts. Kharoshthi seems to work just like a member of the Brahmi
family, except for the trivial detail that it's written from right to
left, so it makes a lot of sense to treat it as one of the family.
You claimed that CVC orthographic units were out of place in Brahmi
scripts - so it's interesting to see them cropping up in various
scripts of the Brahmi family.

Richard.