Sound pattern of Sanskrit in Asia ( was : Linguistics in Ancient India)

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THE SOUND PATTERN

 

of

 

SANSKRIT IN ASIA

 

 

 

An Unheralded Contribution by

 

Indian Brahmans and Buddhist Monks

 

(by Dr Frits Staal)

Home

 

 

 

C o n t e n t s

 

 

 

1. A Vedic Discovery

 

2. Indic Scripts of Asia

 

3. South, Southeast and Central Asia

 

4. East Asia

 

5. Arabic

 

6. Siddham

 

7. Conclusions

 

Acknowledgements

 

Select Bibliography

 

 

Lecture given during the Inaugural Session of the International

Conference on " Sanskrit in Asia " to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Her

Royal Highness Princess Mahachakri Sirindhorn at Silpakorn

University,Bangkok, June 23, 2005.

Subsequently published in Sanskrit Studies Central Journal. Journal of

the Sanskrit Studies Centre, Silpakorn University, 2 (2006) 193-2007.

 

*******************************

 

Your Royal Highness, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

 

 

 

1. A Vedic Discovery

 

 

 

It is a great privilege for me to be present here and discuss Sanskrit

in Asia on this special occasion. I am sure I speak for all of us who

participate in this conference and other visitors, when I say that we

are grateful to Your Royal Highness who is not only taking time from

more pressing duties, but who is also concerned with many languages

other than Sanskrit. I believe they include in alphabetic order

Chinese, English, French, German, Khmer, Latin and Pali, not to

mention Thai, which comes modestly at the end of this list because I

have followed the order of letters of the English ABC. I shall begin

my own inquiry with late Vedic, which is close to Classical Sanskrit

and comes even later than Sanskrit and Thai because " V " comes after

" S " an d " T " in all the Near Eastern and European alphabets that I

shall oppose to the sound pattern of Sanskrit. For I believe with

Plato that if we look at two opposites, side by side, and rub them

against each other, " we may cause justice to blaze out as from the two

kindling sticks " (Republic IV 435 a 1-2) – the Greek equivalent of

agnimanthana in the Vedic fire ritual.

 

 

 

Classical Indian linguists adopted a synchronistic perspective because

they did not regard language as subject to change. We now know that

language evolves in a manner that is not altogether different from the

evolution of the species. Roughly speaking, Old-Khmer evolved into

Cambodian, Latin into Italian and French and Sanskrit into Hindi and

Marathi. The Vedic language went through three stages which are known

as Early, Middle and Late Vedic. Throughout the long period of their

evolution, from about 1700 to 500 BCE, Vedic Indians spoke Vedic by

definition, composed Vedic verse and prose, and transmitted these

compositions to future generations through recitation. It was an

exclusively oral tradition.

 

 

 

Toward the end of the Vedic period and at the western extremity of

Vedic India, in Koåala or Videha, – not far in time and place from

the Buddha's birth – reciters of the Veda made a major discovery

(Figure 1). They found that the consonants of a language are produced

by constricting the vocal tract at a particular point along its

stationary portion -- the palate or upper lip. If we move from the

larynx or throat to the lips, we pronounce ka, ca, øa, ta, pa. Each of

these syllables may be unvoiced or voiced, provided with more or less

breath, which may be made to pass through the nasal cavity as well.

Thus we produce, in the case of ka, the sequence ka, kha, ga, gha, òa;

and similarly for the other four consonantal stops. The two directions

are combined in the two-dimensional square or varga that is depicted

here. In order to complete the picture, a few other syllables have to

be added along with semi-vowels and vowels.

 

 

 

The Vedic system of the sounds of language exhibits and embodies what

is nowadays called phonetics, but is close to phonology which studies

features of those same sounds as parts of a system. The system

exhibits what I refer to as the sound pattern of Vedic, Sanskrit or

language. I do not imply that it is the same for all languages, but

most of the sounds of human speech may be accommodated in some such

scheme. During the Late Vedic period, the Vedic scheme was expounded

in the Åikæâ, the PrËtiÚËkhya and other compositions.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. The Vedic System of the Sounds of Language

 

 

 

 

 

As far as I know, the Vedic discovery of the sound pattern of language

was made only once. Modern linguistics uses distinctive features, but

they would not exist if the sound pattern of language had not been

discovered earlier; by two-and-a-half millennia, as it happens. One

intermediary was PËÙini who composed his grammar one or two centuries

after the Vedic discovery. His grammar incorporated it, but his system

was different. The reason is not that the Vedic pattern is different

from that of Sanskrit. There are differences between the two and

Pâñini referred to some of them by rules that are marked chandasi, " in

the Veda. " But

 

PËÙini composed an entirely new type of grammar for the spoken

language of his day, thereby laying the foundation for Classical

Sanskrit. It inspired not only many other grammars for Sanskrit,

Prakrit and other languages, including Jaina and Buddhist works, but

the great tradition of Sanskrit grammarians from Pataõjali to

Nâgojîbhaøøa as well as modern linguistics. It is Nâgojîbhaøøa who

ended his Paribhâæenduåekhara with what became a famous saying:

" grammarians rejoice over the saving of half a syllable as over the

birth of a son " (ardhamâtrâlâghavena putrotsavaä manyante vaiyâkarañâï).

 

 

 

The Vedic system of sounds that preceded PËÙini is nothing new to you.

Every literate Indian knows it, and I would venture to guess that,

among literate people, more than 50% understand it in Southeast Asia,

less than 50% in East Asia, and perhaps a handful of linguists if you

look west of South Asia. You may be surprised by my guess, but please

note that I have in the mean time shifted my language and refer now to

literate people which is something the Vedic Indians were not.

 

 

 

Looking back we detect a paradox. The discovery of the sound pattern

of Sanskrit was not made despite the absence of writing, but because

of it. The reason is simple: the discoverers were not hampered by any

written alphabet. Writing was invented or introduced later. The

resulting syllabaries were naturally arranged in accordance with the

earlier and superior, but orally-based system. That system was

rational, because it reflected the places of articulation in their

natural order; and practical, especially for languages in which

syllables consist of a consonant followed by a vowel. Japanese is such

a language and Sanskrit to some extent. So are many of the languages

of the Near East and of Europe but their alphabets are neither

rational, nor practical. They blocked insight into the nature of

language and served as obstacles to the development of linguistics.

 

 

 

Literacy takes us to another instructive contrast that is

socio-economic. We have, on the one hand, the difficult grammar of

PËÙini, a work of genius that rightly became famous but was studied by

a small elite of specialists, in India, other Asian countries, Europe

and the Americas. There is, on the other hand, the Vedic system, a

discovery that had a much wider appeal which is due to its rationality

and practicality both. It was beneficial to priests of the court and

the temple, Buddhist monks, astrologers-cum-astronomers and many

others whose writing skills were used in turn by royalty and other

rulers, land owners, bookkeepers, artisans, etc., thus affecting

larger segments of society. It appealed moreover to practical people

who liked to work with a writing system that was not just prestigious

but natural and effective – at least in principle and initially,

before some of the writing systems began to exhibit labyrinthine

qualities.

 

 

 

The languages and inscriptions of South East Asia support these

socio-economic generalities. The Sanskrit inscriptions from Cambodia

contain words that are not found in Sanskrit dictionaries. One of them

is lekhin which refers to a scribe or secretary. We also find

abhyantaralekhin, " personal secretary " or, as Kamaleswar Bhattacharya

translates it, " secrétaire intime. " The Sanskrit root is likh,

" scratch " or " write, " and in Indic Sanskrit we come across derivatives

such as lekha- " document, " lekhaka- " writer, " lekhana " writing, "

etc.; but not lekhin. In Old-Javanese, similar derivatives are at

least apparent. Thus we have lekita which means " written evidence " and

is used in a court of law. It also refers to " by-laws of the village. "

It may come from Sanskrit lekhita " written " or " caused to be written, "

but may be connected with Javanese lukita which means " thought

expressed in words " or " literary composition " and may in turn be

related to another term that is certainly native: lukis " drawn with a

pen. " All this evidence suggests that the introduction of Sanskrit had

something to do with writing.

 

 

 

Why are such simple facts not mentioned by specialists in writing

systems? Because students of scripts generally confine themselves to

the shapes of letters and characters. It is well known that Indic

shapes were adapted in Central and Southeast Asia. But that is only

the least interesting part of the story as is demonstrated by the

fact, that the Indian system spread much further than the Indic

shapes. The sound pattern of Sanskrit was adopted and adapted in a

large part of Asia - including Central Asia, Korea, Japan and,

momentarily, in a grammar of Arabic composed in Iran. I refer to

adoption and adaptation because, in most cases, the Indic system was

not imitated slavishly but adapted creatively to new languages and

language structures.

 

 

 

Since our present enquiry is not concerned with shapes but with order,

epigraphy - another topic to which our guest of honor has devoted

years of study – is of limited assistance. The same holds for

palaeography in the narrower sense. A typical example, de Casparis'

Indonesian Palaeography, subtitled A History of Writing in Indonesia,

is still the basic manual on the shapes of the characters but does not

refer to their order even once. I hope that epigraphists in Thailand,

where that rare and valuable discipline still flourishes, will look

for order and take it into account when they find it.

 

 

 

2. Indic Scripts of Asia

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2 provides a geographical overview of the Indic Scripts of

Asia. It shows at a glance that the Indian system together with the

shapes of its syllables is confined to South and Southeast Asia. The

Indian system without the shapes was adopted and adapted in Central

Asia, Korea and Japan. Occasional uses of the system are found in

China and in Southwest Asia or the Near East.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2. Indic Scripts of Asia

 

 

 

 

 

3. South, Southeast and Central Asia

 

 

 

I start this brief overview with a mystery: the script of Kharoshthi,

probably the earliest Indic script, which was used in northwest India

and spread to Central Asia from about the fourth century BCE to the

third century CE. The order of syllables starts with a ra pa ca

na la da ba èa æa . . . That order is unexplained and the

script is called Arapacana after the first five syllables. It

possesses clearly Indic features: each syllable ends in a short –a and

diacritic signs are added when that short –a is replaced by another

vowel. The order of vowels, however, is not Indic but Aramaic: a e i

o u and not a i u e o. That order is also adopted by diacritics

attached to consonants from top to bottom when changing a into e, i, o

and u.

 

 

 

The other early Indic script is Brahmi. It is the paradigm of the

Vedic system. It influenced, directly or indirectly, via Pallava or

other medieval Indian scripts, all the scripts of South and Southeast

Asia that include (again in alphabetic order) Balinese, Bengali,

Burmese, Devanagari, Grantha, Gujrati, Gupta, Gurmukhi, Kannada,

Khmer, Lao, Malayalam, Nepali, Oriya, Pallava, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu

and Thai.

 

 

 

The evidence for these influences is constituted by the scripts

themselves. Textual evidence for how the transmission occurred is less

common. The same applies to the evidence for Indian numerals. But

there is circumstantial evidence, in both cases. It is probable, for

example, that one of the Indian brahmans who transmitted the Vedic

paradigm to Cambodia, was the South Indian who belonged, according to

a seventh century Cambodian inscription, to the Yajurvedic school of

Taittirîya. The reason is that among the Prâtiåâkhya compositions that

explain the Vedic system, only the Taittirîya Prâtiåâkhya depicts the

Vedic square (varga) of Figure 1 in full.

 

 

 

I have excluded Javanese from the above enumeration because the order

of its syllables illustrates a different kind of principle from the

Vedic and alphabetic both: hana caraka, data sawala, padha jayanya,

maga bathanga. This list is Indic in form, and Old Javanese (Kawi)

retains the Indic device of writing consonant clusters by putting one

consonant symbol below another. But the creators do not seem to have

liked or understood the rationale behind the Indic order. What they

construed instead is a mnemonic jingle that includes one occurrence of

each of twenty of the twenty-two consonantal syllables of the Javanese

script. It has a meaning: " There were two emissaries, they began to

fight, their valor was equal, they both fell dead. "

 

 

 

The chief Central Asian varieties are Khotanese, Tibetan and

`Phags-pa. The latter script was created from the Tibetan by the lama

of that name for the Mongol Emperor Qubilai or " Kubla Khan " as an

international script for his Asian Empire. Other Central Asian

scripts, such as Bactrian or Sogdian, do not concern us here because

they were not Indic but Aramaic in shape and order both.

 

 

 

The numbers of South, Southeast and Central Asian scripts that adopted

the Indic order is large. An attractive estimate occurs in the tenth

chapter of the Lalitavistara, called Lipiåâlâsaädaråanaparivarta, " the

revolution of displays of the mansions of writing. " It lists 64

different scripts that were mastered by the Bodhisattva. The title of

the chapter is reminiscent of the Buddha's own dharmacakrapravartana.

It emphasizes instructively that the carriers of the sound pattern of

Sanskrit to other Asian regions were not only Indian Brahmans but

also, and in increasing numbers, Buddhist monks. It is explained at

least in part by the geographical facts with which I started: the

discovery of the sound pattern of language by Vedic reciters occurred

close in place and time to the areas where early Buddhism flourished.

It was a feature of civilization that Buddhists carried across Asia.

 

 

 

4. East Asia

 

 

 

The Chinese system of writing is so different from Vedic orality and

all that it entailed, that Indians had nothing to contribute. It

caused confusion since Chinese Buddhists believed that each Indic

shape was independent and had its own meaning, like many Chinese

characters. There were a few exceptions. Hsieh Ling-yün (384-433 CE),

poet and calligrapher, assisted by Hui-ju, a Buddhist monk, composed a

Sanskrit glossary in Chinese transliteration in the Indian order.

After the ninth century, rhyme tables were composed for each tone in

that same order.

 

 

 

The Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries of Japan adopted strokes from

Chinese characters, but reflect the Indic system which was gradually

adapted to the sounds of Japanese. An example from the Heian period is

pa pi pu pe po, which became subsequently fa fi fu fe fo, and has now

reached the form ha hi fu he ho. It is a classic illustration of the

difference between creative adaptation and slavish imitation. But it

did not please everyone and a poem was composed in which all but one

of the syllables were used once. Their order is not phonetic but

semantic. It is called Iroha after the first syllables: iro ha nioedo

chirinuru wo waga …and has been attributed to the famous philosopher

and calligrapher Kûkai or Kôbôdaishi to whom we will return. In

English translation, it says: " Colorful flowers are fragrant but they

must fall. Who in this world will live forever? Today cross over the

deep mountains of life's illusions; and there will be no more shallow

dreaming, no more drunkenness. " It sounds better than the mnemonic

device used for Javanese but belongs to the same category.

 

 

 

The Korean Han-gul is the world's most perfect script. Even the shapes

of its syllables reflect the shapes of the mouth when producing sounds

– as does, in English and other European languages, only the shape of

the letter " o, " which may be seen as a picture of the rounding of the

mouth. The perfection of the Korean order is due to the Indic but is

fully adapted to the sound pattern of Korean. Han-gul was developed in

1444 CE by a committee of scholars, including Buddhist monks,

appointed by the Emperor of Korea. The committee report starts with

the basic insight: " The sounds of our country's language are different

from those of China. "

 

 

 

5. Arabic

 

 

 

The case of Arabic deserves a separate lecture by an expert but I

shall try to summarize its most salient features. The order of letters

in the standard alphabet is based on their shapes (Figure 3). But

al-Khal & #299;l bin Aïmad, teacher of Åibawayhi, author of the most famous

grammar of Arabic, introduced in the eighth century a new list in

which he had re-arranged the letters, starting in the back of the

mouth with the `Ain followed by Ïâ, Hâ, Khâ, Ghain, Qâf, Kâf, etc.

(same Figure 3). It is referred to as the Kitâb al-`Ayn. Al-Khal & #299;l was

probably born in Basra, but he wrote his grammar in Khorasan, the

easternmost part of Iran which is the gateway to India.

 

 

 

Al-Khal & #299;l's Arabic grammar was not adopted by the Arab world. There

has been much controversy about the question whether it was inspired

by the Indic paradigm. Scholars have argued that Arabic is very

different from Sanskrit (it is), that there is no evidence

 

Figure 3. The Standard Arabic Alphabet and the Indian " Alphabet " of

the Kitâb al-`Ayn

 

that al-Khal & #299;l studied the Prâtiåâkhya literature or other Sanskrit

treatises (true because he didn't), that borrowing of an alien system

without any of the details on which it rests is almost unknown (?),

that there were no contacts between Arab and Indian scholars at the

time of al-Khal & #299;l (not true because there were such contacts in

mathematics), and so on. The argument, in brief, is based upon the

assumption that borrowing must be what I have called slavish imitation.

 

 

 

Having listened to me so far, you may already be inclined to conclude,

that al-Khal & #299;l's grammar was inspired by the Indian paradigm. But we

need a reason or, at least, a more accurate account. Morris Halle

(personal communication) provides precise evidence of the influence of

the Vedic discovery on al-Khal & #299;l's grammar. Al-Khal & #299;l's order of

consonants is basically a linearization of the two-dimensional array

of Figure 1. Unless he knew the Vedic order, he would have no reason

to deviate from the traditional order of Arabic consonants as depicted

on the top of Figure 3. He furthermore extended the system by adding

the rear wall of the pharynx as a point of constriction. Put in more

general terms, it means this. In linguistics, as in mathematics, ideas

that are part of an oral tradition may be picked up by a brilliant

scientist, who does not study a text, let alone slavishly, but

understands the subject. Al-Khal & #299;l was such a man. He went as far as

performing experiments, for instance, by putting his fingers in his

mouth. The ancient Indians may have done it too. But superior

qualities of the subject and the student are not enough. The Indic

system did not enter the Near East or Europe because of prejudice,

narrow-mindedness and plain ignorance.

 

 

 

6. Siddham

 

 

 

It would not be good to end my lecture on a negative note and so I

have kept the auspicious syllabary of Siddham for last. It will show

that I have omitted from our discussion a large area of patterned

sound, that of mantras and dharañîs. The Siddham syllabary was

construed, in the Indic order, for the expression of these sacred

syllables and their export to East Asia. The number that was exported

from India, sometimes in exchange for other goods, probably exceeds

that of any other commodity, although no attention seems to have been

paid to it by economic historians. Seekers, however, sought solace in

these treasures that were of easier access than the Sanskrit language

itself, which famous Chinese pilgrims had gone to India to learn, but

which was never studied seriously in China proper.

 

 

 

To illustrate the export of the Siddham, we return once more to the

Japanese Buddhist monk Kûkai or Kôbôdaishi, who was born in the eighth

century. Kûkai went to China and studied the Siddham script with

Prajõa, a monk from Kashmir who was translating Tantric texts. After

his return to Japan, Kûkai built a monastery at Koyasan which became

the center of the Shingon sect. He taught his pupils mantras and

dharañîs and how to write them in the Siddham script. Figure 4 depicts

a scroll from Koyasan with the Siddham character A.

 

Figure 4. Siddham " A " from Koyasan

 

 

 

7. Conclusions

 

 

 

I derive five conclusions from our brief discussion. The first is that

the sound pattern of Sanskrit was adopted and adapted by many writing

systems of Asia. The exporters were Indian brahmans and Buddhist

monks. The second is that the pattern that underlies the system was

not always understood. The third is that those Asian writing systems

are applications of a theory of language, just as airplanes are

applications of the laws of aerodynamics. The fourth, closely

connected, is that a writing system is only as good as the theory upon

which it is based. (Since the accuracy of theories is measured in

degrees, absence of any theory points to probability zero.) My fifth

and final conclusion is hypothetical in character. If the sound

pattern of Sanskrit had also reached the Near East and Europe, there

would not be so many clumsy alphabets around and the modern world

would have the benefit of rational and practical Indic syllabaries in

addition to rational and practical Indic numerals.

 

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

 

 

I am deeply grateful to Dr. Samniang Leurmsai of the Sanskrit Studies

Centre, Silpakorn University, Bangkok, for inviting me to speak in

the inaugural session on June 23, 2005, of the International

Conference on " Sanskrit in Asia " to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of

the Birth of Her Royal Highness Princess Mahachakri Sirindhorn.

 

 

 

When preparing this paper, I saw that Richard Salomon was about to

address the 215th meeting of the American Oriental Society at

Philadelphia of March 20, 2005, on " On Alphabetical Order in India,

and Elsewhere. " I was unable to attend that meeting but I wrote to

Richard and he very kindly sent me a draft of his paper. It became

obvious that both of us shared an interest in the order of characters,

and not only in their shapes like many other students of scripts. It

turned out also that both of us made use of the 1996 manual on The

World's Writing Systems (WWS) by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright

(see Select Bibliography below), to which Richard had already

contributed the section on Brahmi and Kharosthi. I have learned much

from Richard Salomon's contributions and our subsequent

correspondence. Our contributions are in some respects complementary

but the reader will note that there are differences between our

approaches. My own approach reflects the wider context of Staal 2005.

 

 

 

WWS itself calls for additional comment. It is learned and

informative. It has been widely praised, especially from the point of

view of Semitic Linguistics (Kaye 2003). However, its adherence to the

International Phonetic Alphabet is baffling to the intended wide

audience and obscured further by the idiosyncratic terminologies of

both editors and the careless use of many other technical and

semi-technical terms that are nowhere explained. Even the concept of

" syllabary " is regarded as a kind of alphabet; as in the Oxford

Dictionary, which declares that a syllabary serves " the purpose of an

alphabet " . It is not and does not and these verdicts are simply

cultural constructs.

 

 

 

Truly fatal to the subject of WWS is its atomistic approach which, in

many of its sections, obliterates the intimate relationships that

exist between the scripts they deal with. The contributions by

Christopher Court, Leonard van der Kuijp and Richard Salomon's own are

free from this defect, and William Bright recognizes that " the

traditional order of symbols in the Indian scripts is based primarily

on articulatory phonetics, as originally developed for Sanskrit by the

ancient pandits " (page 384). But the 113 pages on South and Southeast

Asia in this tome of 922 pages, the only ones that study a writing

system that is rational and practical, are seriously misleading, not

on the whole but as a whole. That has, furthermore, a curious

implication. If we omit some pages from the South and South East Asian

section that do not reflect the Indic system, and add a few on Korean

and Japanese that do, we are left with some 800 pages that are

expressly devoted to the description of irrationalities and

impracticalities that are a disgrace to homo sapiens though not the

only one.

 

 

 

I can summarize my comments best by quoting from my own paper its

fourth conclusion. The editors seem to ignore the fact that their

phonetic approach, which mirrors the Indic system, lacks its

fundamental insight: " a writing system is only as good as the theory

upon which it is based. "

 

 

 

Linguists will have noted that the expression " sound pattern " evokes

Morris Halle's " Sound Pattern of Russian " of 1959 and Chomsky and

Halle's " Sound Pattern of English " of 1968. What was meant there is

clearly explained in the Preface to the second book: " we are not, in

this work, concerned exclusively or even primarily with the facts of

English as such. We are interested in these facts for the light they

shed on linguistic theory (on what, in an earlier period, would have

been called universal grammar) and for what they suggest about the

nature of mental processes in general. " That Chomsky and Halle's book

is inspired by the Indic tradition is clear from its final rule, which

is identical with the final rule of PËÙini 's grammar: " a a. "

 

 

 

In later publications, Noam Chomsky did not shy away from the

expression " universal grammar. " My present contribution is different

from all these important works. It is only a brief discussion, but it

is concerned with applications, history and practicalities as well as

theory. I have tried to show how the Vedic discovery is based on a

theory of language that may be used in discussing the contributions of

Sanskrit to Asian societies and to civilization. These are ambitious

efforts and some of the few steps I have taken may have been unsteady.

I hope that readers will render assistance in discussing, confirming,

refuting or amending what I have written.

 

 

 

Staal 2005 is concerned with the theory and development of language,

natural as well as artificial. It lists the publications on Arabic and

Japanese that I have used for the present paper also. Here I like

again to express my indebtedness for guidance and references to

Professors Oscar von Hinüber, Richard C. Martin, Kees Versteegh, W.J.

Boot and Michio Yano. Special thanks go to Professor Morris Halle of

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a significant correction

and important observation mentioned in the body of the text. My final

acknowledgments go to Edward M. Stadum and Peter Vandemoortele for

their help with the illustrations and powerpoints that were part of

the presentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

 

 

 

Allen, W.S. (1953), Phonetics in Ancient India. London etc.: Oxford

University Press.

 

 

 

Alpert, Harvey P., ed. (1989), Understanding Mantras. Albany: State

University of New York Press.

 

 

 

Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar (1961), Les religions brahmaniques dans

l'ancien Cambodge, d'apres l'épigraphie et l'iconographie, Paris:

Ecole fran©aise d'extreme orient XLIX.

 

 

 

Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar (1964), " Recherches sur le vocabulaire des

inscriptions sanskrites du Cambodge, " Bulletin de l'école fran©aise

d'extreme-orient 102/1:1-72.

 

 

 

Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar (1966), " Supplément aux recherches sur le

vocabulaire des inscriptions sanskrites du Cambodge, " Bulletin de

l'école fran©aise d'extreme-orient 103/1:273-77.

 

 

 

Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar (1997), " The Religions of Ancient Cambodia, "

in: Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia. New York: Thames and

Hudson, 34-52.

 

 

 

Brough, John, (1977) " The Arapacana Syllabary in the old

Lalitavistara, " Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

40:85-95. Republished in Hara and Wright, eds., 450-60.

 

 

 

Casparis, J.G. de (1975), Indonesian Palaeography. A History of

Writing in Indonesia from the Beginnings to c. A.D. 1500. Leiden: E.J.

Brill. Handbuch der Orientalistik II, 4, 1.

 

 

 

Casparis, J.G. de and I.W. Mabbett (1992, 1999), " Religion and Popular

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