South Asia Research and Information Institute P. O. Box 70-0371

Dallas, TX 75370-0371 Phone: (214) 739-8528

Email: info@sarii.org www.sarii.org

Board of Directors

V. S. Gopinath (703) 691-5428

S. Palaniappan (214) 739-8528

Paul Pandian (972) 991-2900

Vijayan Pillai (817) 272-5353 President S. Palaniappan (214) 739-8528 Vice President Paul Pandian (972) 991-2900 Secretary Vijayan Pillai (817) 272-5353 Treasurer Paul Pandian (972) 991-2900

November 6, 2010 Dr. Lisa Moore Chair Unicode Technical Committee Unicode Consortium U.S.A Dear Dr. Moore, Subject: Current GOI Proposal to Unicode Technical Committee on the Grantha script As President of South Asia Research and Information Institute and as a person who constantly works with Grantha text in Tamil inscriptions, I am requesting you to reject the "Proposal to encode the Grantha script in Unicode (L2/10-426)" dated October 18, 2010 until modifications are made to the proposal to address the problems discussed below. The first problem I see is that the subject proposal misrepresents the nature of Grantha script and its historic use. For your consideration, by way of example, I am attaching an excerpt (Attachment 1) from Kūram Plates, an inscription issued in the 7th century CE by a Pallava king ruling in Tamil Nadu.1 As you can see in page 3 of Attachment 1 (inscription line 49 in page 150), the text ஊற்றுக்காட்டுக்ெகாட்ட (Ūṟṟukkāṭṭukkoṭṭa) embedded in the Sanskrit text is rendered in Tamil script while the rest of the Sanskrit text is rendered in Devanāgarī. The example given includes the use of ṟ and o. There are other inscriptions where other Tamil characters such as Tamil ன (U+0BA9) or ழ (U+0BB4) are used in the midst of Sanskrit written in Grantha script. Rendering the text ஊற்றுக்காட்டுக்ெகாட்ட from Tamil in Tamil script is the way to preserve the historical accuracy of the inscriptional record. If the Tamil characters become part of a Grantha superset, this historical fact will be lost and it will be difficult to identify the source language of the original text. This is a significant historical loss. The second problem is even more significant. If the current Grantha proposal is approved, it will lead to a fundamental misunderstanding of how Tamil was pronounced over the centuries. As mentioned earlier, Tamil inscriptions often have Sanskrit and Tamil texts. Even within a single word, Tamil letters and Grantha letters will be mixed in.2 This can be seen in Attachment 2 containing excerpts from Taḷavāypuram Copper Plates 1 “A Pallava Grant from Kūram.” South Indian Inscriptions, Volume1, no. 151. Published by the Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, 1991, p. 150. 2 Ten Pandya Copper Plates. Published by The Tamil Varalatru Kazhagam (The Tamil History Academy), Madras, 1967, pp. 98, 102, 112, and 103.

2

South Asia Research and Information Institute P. O. Box 70-0371

Dallas, TX 75370-0371 Phone: (214) 739-8528

Email: info@sarii.org www.sarii.org

Evidence indicates that in many cases all or part of Tamil words rendered in Grantha script amidst Sanskrit text have been transliterated letter for letter and not transcribed sound for sound. In this situation, if the word ‘Cōmāci’3 (ேசாமாசி) is written in Tamil letters as in line 207 of Attachment 2, it could represent a pronunciation where the intervocalic affricate ‘c’ would be pronounced as sibilant ‘s’ in the 10th century.4 (This type of surd-sonant variation has been noted by scholars not only in native Tamil words but also in words borrowed from Sanskrit. The fact that in line 84 of Attachment 2, Sanskrit ‘Vātāpi’ is rendered in Tamil as ‘Vātāvi’ (வாதாவி) where Vātāvi < Vātābi*< Vātāpi, confirms this.) If the inscription has only instances of the word transliterated in Grantha as ‘Comāci’ (चोमाची in equivalent Devanāgarī) as in line 42 of Attachment 2, it would lead to an understanding that the intervocalic 'c' was pronounced as ‘c’, which would be incorrect. This is the problem resulting from replacing words written in Tamil phonemic script with Grantha phonetic script. The third problem I see is that the current Grantha proposal does not simply computerize the characters included in the ancient Grantha script used in Tamil Nadu for centuries to represent Sanskrit in literary texts and inscriptions. The proposal adds letters unique to Tamil such as e, o, ḻ, ṟ, and ṉ also to the Grantha script which the Grantha script never included, thus creating a new Grantha script. Here again, historical accuracy will be lost because Grantha short e represented Tamil long ē, and Grantha short o represented Tamil long ō.

UTC has to note that Grantha was a script used to write Sanskrit primarily in the Tamil country. According to Government of India's own statement in its Grantha proposal, the Grantha initiative was "taken to encode our heritage scripts i.e. Vedic Sanskrit and Grantha in the Unicode standard so that our ancient knowledge could be represented on electronic media, computers, etc." In other words, the purpose of the Unicode Grantha should be to process ancient literary and inscriptional texts produced in the past for archiving and transliterating purposes only. The objective should not be to produce a newly-designed script for contemporary communication with characters not historically part of Grantha at the expense of historical accuracy as has been done by the subject proposal. While it is technically possible for users to encode Tamil with Tamil characters and Sanskrit with Grantha characters in the same document, the presence of duplicate Tamil characters in the Grantha character set can lead to data entry errors that are often difficult to detect. For a script with the primary purpose of capturing very large number of historical documents, such a possibility warrants reconsidering the addition of Tamil

3 Tamil ‘Cōmāci’ < Sanskrit ‘Somayājin’. 4 The actual Tamil form found in the inscription is ‘Comāci’ and not ‘Cōmāci’. (The authors of this publication had interpreted what is in the original inscription and had printed using the modern equivalents of ‘ē’ and ‘ō’ where they deemed it appropriate. But we should remember that in terms of historical accuracy in archival preservation, the right thing to have done is to use short ‘e’ and short ‘o’ as is done in the case of ‘Ūṟṟukkāṭṭukkoṭṭa’ in Attachment 1.

3

South Asia Research and Information Institute P. O. Box 70-0371

Dallas, TX 75370-0371 Phone: (214) 739-8528

Email: info@sarii.org www.sarii.org

characters in the Grantha space. It is also of note that, overwhelming proportion of documents in Grantha script are historical rather than contemporary, and one should err on the side of preserving historical accuracy rather than risk innovations of dubious value with the addition of Tamil characters to Grantha. Another important point to note is that Grantha script is phonetic and the Tamil characters are phonemic in nature. Such a mixture does injustice to an historical script. When writing texts that have Sanskrit and Tamil letters, one can always switch back and forth between Grantha and Tamil scripts in much the same way Tamil and English is used in modern usage. There is no need to create a superset of Tamil script with English (Latin) alphabetic characters or vice versa. In fact creating a superset will make it ambiguous. In summary, if the proposal is accepted, it will lead to inaccurate historical documents when ancient inscriptions and manuscripts are digitized, mislead future scholars and researchers, and distort the history of language use in South India. Accordingly, I request you to reject the current Grantha proposal and seek a revised proposal that preserves fidelity to the historical documents with respect to clearly identifying Tamil and Sanskrit texts as well as not adding characters not in the original Grantha script. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely,

Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan, Ph.D. President South Asia Research and Information Institute Dallas, TX 75370-0371

Attachments

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S OUTTI-INDIAN INS CRIPTIONS

Volume-I

TAMIL AI{D SAI{SKRIT

FROM STONE A}.ID COPPER.PI.ATE EDICTSAT MAMALI.APURAM, KA]{CHIPURAM IN Ti{E NORTH ARCOT DISTRICT,

AIID OTHER PARTS OF THE IvIADRAS PRESIDENCY

CHIEFLY COLLECTED IN 188687.

PT,'BIJSHED BYTHE DIRECTOR GENERAL

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SI,'RVET OF II{DIAJAT.IPATTI, NEW DELIU-UO OlI

1991

(14{)

P}NT IY.

ADDENDA.

: : No. 151. A Prr.r,,tv,r onrNr rnou KCnlu.

The origina! gf the subjoineil graut w.as borrght for Government from tbe Dharmakartd,

of Kfiram, a vlllege ucru Kf,tichlpuram.t It is engravcd on seveu thin copper-plates,

cacb of wbich mcasurcs l0l- b1' 3f iuches. As ttre platcs ors in vory ba{ preservatiou, thc

rror.k of rlcciphering thern rrli$ ,somewlst difEcult. Of the seventh plate about oue haH is

colrpletcly lost. Ncst to it, tlrc first, fifth aud sixth plates have sufferod most. Au cllipticring, which is about $- inch tirick and mcasures a by ai inchcs in diametor, is passed through

r holc on tbe left siile of tnch plate. The seal is about 21 inches in diameter anrl bears a

bull, which is seated on a pcclcstal, faces the left antl is sunnounted by the moon and a lihga.

Farther up, there are a ferv much obliterated syllrrbles. A legentl of many letters passes

rcund tho whole seal. Unfortunately it is so much worn, that I have failed to decipher it.The language of the first 4| plates of the iuscription is Sanskrit,-verse and prosel the

remainder is written iu Tamii. The Sanskrit portion opens with three benediotory verses,

of which the two first are adrbcssed to Sira and tho third, rnentions tho raco of the Palla-va.fi. Then follows, as usual,t a mythical genealogy of Pallava, the supposed found,er ofthe ltalhva race :-

nralnan.

. Ahgiras.

Ilrihaspati.I

Bharadvdja.I

I)ro?a.

Asvattlfrman.I

Pallava.

Tlro historieal patt of the inscription describes three kidls,rtia.rPartmefvatavar-man, bis father Mahcndravarman and his grandfather Narasifthavarman. OfNarasifthavarman it mys,. that he 'r repeatedly tlefeated tho Choias, Keralas, Kala-bhras and Pflgdyas,t' that he " wrote the(thrce) syllables of. (theword)djaga (i.e., victorg),

a8 on a plate, on Pnlakcdiu'e back, rvhich w:rs causcd, to be visiblc (i.e., whom lu caaaed to

turn hie back)iathebattlesof Pariyafa,Manimahgala,Sfiramflra,etc.r" antlthathe-., destroyed (tlu citg o/) Ydtdpi.tt No historicbl information is given about Mahendra-TarErsn, who, accorrtingly, seems to have beeu an insigniffcaot rule.r. A laudatory

ileacriptionof thevirtues and deedsof hisson Paramedvaravarman fflls ti'o plates of

rhe insciption I'he only historieal fact containeil in this long arril difficult passage is tlat

r Sovell's LithotAtiigaitia4Yul. l, p. 187.t Copare tle pedigreee or Imges

g ard 25, above, anil Initr. lnt. Yol. YlI, p. 277.

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TEN PANDYA COPPER-PLATES

Published with the financialof Education, GovernmentGovernment of Madras'

PRICB Rs. 16/-

assistance from MinistrYof India and the State

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