Palaeography

The following directly-accessible resources supplement the better-known print materials by Bühler, Dani and others.

Character charts from manuscripts in China

  • Akṣara List of the Manuscripts of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and Buddhapālita’s Commentary (ca. 550-650 CE, Collection of Sanskrit Mss. Formerly Preserved in the China Ethnic Library)
  • Akṣara List of the Manuscript of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (1082 CE, Collection of Sanskrit Mss. Formerly Preserved in the China Ethnic Library).
  • Further akṣara-charts from the China Ethnic Library.

Printed reference works

  • Cecil Bendall’s chart of Nepalese letter-numerals from manuscripts of the ninth century upwards (see also scan at archive.org).
  • Cecil Bendall’s chart of Nepalese letters from manuscripts of the ninth century upwards.
  • Cecil Bendall’s Palaeographical Introduction
  • Bidur Bhattarai, Dividing Texts: Conventions of Visual Text-Organisation in Nepalese and North Indian Manuscripts (De Gruyter, 2020). Open access.
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    Einicke, Katrin. 2014. Korrektur, Differenzierung und Abkürzung in indischen Inschriften und Handschriften. Harrassowitz Verlag. http://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1691626.

Newa script Unicode notes and standards

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    Unicode Consortium. 2020. The Unicode Standard 13.0, NewaRange: 11400–1147F. https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U11400.pdf.
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    Pandey, Anshuman. 2012. Proposal to Encode the Newar Script in ISO/IEC 10646. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N4184L2/12-003R2012-02-29. Michigan, USA. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12003r-newar.pdf.
    A particularly useful document with manuscript illustrations and discussion of paratextual elements like puṣpikās and siddhir astu symbols.

Software tools

  • Indoskript, an online a paleographic database of Brahmi and Kharosthi – derived scripts.
  • Quick Palaeographer, by Charles Li, is an aid while learning the palaeography of a new manuscript. This enables one rapidly to build up an indexed and clickable repertoire of letter-forms from a manscrupt image.