Guess what, theists? Animals have feelings too. That’s what Cambridge scientists are now confident in saying in the wake of the recent Francis Crick Conference. Science and reason are important in a modern society, so it just became that much harder to inflict scripturally sanctioned harm on sentient beings.
This reminds me of a discussion I once had in Germany. Prof. Schmithausen, you were right to think that something was up with theistic contempt for animals. The priests you knew may have been accurate on the detail – animals don’t have souls – but they were wrong on the big picture: they don’t either. Both humans and animals have “homologous subcortical brain networks” and share “primal affective qualia”. Every body hurts; and that suppressed observation was obvious long before it became a hipster anthem.
‘Are you hungry, Buddha? Because I know how that feels.’ Ancient Buddhist story of animal sentience, illustrated in an 11th-century Newar manuscript now kept at Cambridge.
Long-time readers might remember this – now in print:
Yoshizaki, Kazumi (吉崎一美). The Kathmandu Valley as a Water Pot: Abstracts of research papers on Newar Buddhism in Nepal. Kathmandu: Vajra Books, 2012. 172 pp. ISBN: 9937506743. EAN: 9789937506748. USD$12.95. [official site]
Marylin M. Rhie; Robert A. F. Thurman, contrib.; Maria R. Heim, contrib.; Paola Zamperini, contrib.; Camille Myers Breeze, contrib. Picturing Enlightenment: Tibetan Tangkas in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. Amherst: Mead Art Museum, August 2012. 152 pp. 71 color illus. USD$34.95. ISBN 978-0-914337-34-8. [official site]
“This lavishly illustrated book with an extensive catalogue and three essays by noted scholars, [sic] introduces the outstanding collection of eighteen Tibetan paintings in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.” (Exhibition Catalogue.)
Bhagavān Kālacakra. 18th c. Mead Art Museum 1952.33.
Oliver von Criegern. ‘Das Sarvadharmaguṇavyūharājasūtra: ein Mahāyānasūtra zum Buchkult aus den Gilgitfunden’. München Univ., Diss., 2009. 237 pp. [unseen]
A new and ambitious font, Source Sans Pro, which has glyphs in the Latin Extended Additional codeblock (required for most Indological publishing in Unicode), was released by Adobe earlier this month.
Why ambitious? Because free, open source, high quality and produced by a stalwart of design in the digital era, all at once. Its letterforms riff on News Gothic, a typeface of enduring appeal. And it comes with an inspiringly comprehensive set of weights, from Extra Light to Black, and true italics. Anyone who knows what a proper font needs to have will know how rare and remarkable this is. Although it’s optimised for user interfaces, I’ve tested it in XeTeX and found that it works superbly. Here’s a snippet of how it looks, from the specimen:
Source Sans Pro Capitals, regular weight (specimen, p.9).
What’s the catch? None other than the fact that just by using it and pulling apart the source, you might be more inclined to contribute to its development. A reason for releasing the font as open source (and hence free) is to demystify the increasingly complicated process of creating multiple-weight Unicode OpenType fonts, thereby encouraging the production and proliferation of fonts that meet contemporary standards. Open source lets all that complexity communally come to light, as Paul D. Hunt (and his commenters) reveal in Adobe’s official announcement of the font.
Li, Shenghai 李勝海 [academia.edu]. ‘Candrakīrti’s Āgama: A Study of the Concept and Uses of Scripture in Classical Indian Buddhism’. PhD diss., University of Madison-Wisconsin, 2012. 311 pp.
From the Abstract
This dissertation examines scripture as a concept and the various roles that authoritative Buddhist texts play as such in the intellectual history of Buddhism. While it considers what Buddhist authors explicitly speak about scripture, the project brings into focus the recorded uses of authoritative texts, with an interest in discovering intellectual practices and learning about the management and transmission of knowledge. The main source materials of this study consist of instances of scriptural references found in the scholastic and commentarial works of several influential Indian and Tibetan authors, all of whom are connected with the pivotal figure of Candrakīrti (ca. 570-640), whose major writings lie at the center of the investigation. […]
Highlighting a keen awareness of the problem of reifying reason displayed by certain Buddhist writers from the Madhyamaka School of thought, the dissertation argues more specifically that the Buddhist scholastic tradition is cognizant of the hermeneutical condition of understanding and of reason’s contingency upon language, context, and tradition.
Refer to: Anshuman Pandey, ‘N4184 Proposal to Encode the Newar Script in ISO/IEC 10646’, February 29, 2012 [PDF]. Previous discussion: here.
0. On the Name ‘Newar’
The name ‘Newar’ is preferable simply because most other options can be ruled out. ‘Nepalese’ is untenable, because it falsely implies a one-to-one relationship with the present-day nation-state, even though it is accurate within a certain (historically earlier) context. ‘Newari’ is a (now deprecated) name for the language – not the script, nor anything else; ‘Nevārī’ is quite meaningless, except to some Indologists.
The proposal, as I understand it, indeed deals with the Pracalita script, but has enough hooks to allow unification with proposals for other Newar scripts, such as Bhujiṅmola – hence ‘Newar’. (NB: It is not yet clear whether unification with Rañjanā – which is, strictly speaking, Indo-Nepalese, and which has a user base that includes many non-Newars, such as Tibetans – is feasible. In any case, much of the present and previous discussion about the Pracalita script is also applicable to Rañjanā.)
1. Additional Information On Glyph Names
11442 NEWAR FINAL ANUSVARA: Although this mark originates with the m-virāma mark used by East Indian scribes, in Nepal it has multivalent significance and in many contexts has nothing to do with nasalization (often being interchangeable with 1144B NEWAR GAP FILLER). Recommendation: Minimise phonetic/semantic description in favour of graphic description – maybe NEWAR SEMICOLON for want of a better term. Classify under Punctuation or Various Signs.
11443 NEWAR SIDDHI = शुभचिं (Shrestha NS 1132:21). There is no uniform name for this mark in Newar (esp. not the neologism bhiṃciṃ), nor is siddhi/añji recommended (not just because this designation is unknown in Nepal, but because usage may also vary; confusion with NEWAR OM is common). Recommendation: NEWAR AUSPICIOUSNESS MARK or similar.
11449 NEWAR DOUBLE COMMA: I now think this mark can be represented with two adjacent NEWAR COMMAs. Its usual behaviour of stacking diagonally (see Fig.3) rather than horizontally should however be specified. Recommendation: Remove from the repertoire.
1144B NEWAR HIGH SPACING DOT = अल्पविराम (ibid.).
1144C NEWAR ABBREVIATION SIGN CIRCLE = संक्षेपीकरण यानाः च्वयातःगु थासय् थुगु चिं (ibid.).
1145C NEWAR PLACEHOLDER MARK is the line-width equivalent of the NEWAR GAP FILLER (see below). Recommendation: Change name to NEWAR LINE FILLER MARK.
2. Morphology of the Gap Filler Mark
Following comments on earlier drafts of N4184, especially those of Kashinath Tamot, it should be clarified that the primary function of 1144B NEWAR GAP FILLER is not that of indicating a break in a word (as per the previous name SANDHI MARK), but rather of filling space up to the end of a line margin. (A hyphen indeed performs a space-filling operation as well as functioning as a word-breaking mark. However, I suggest that ‘hyphenation’ be dropped from the formal description of this mark to avoid confusion.)
The purpose of this mark has been obvious enough to specialists – recently see, e.g. Ishida (2011:ix), where it is called a ‘line-filler character’, Zeilenfüllzeichen. (In fact, this mark does not fill a line – this is the function of 1145C NEWAR PLACEHOLDER MARK; rather, it fills a space of less than one full glyph-width at the end of a margin, not necessarily the end of a line.) Nonetheless, it is easily seen that the mark could be confused with, e.g., a visarga, daṇḍa or similar. In earlier discussion on the proposal, its purpose has remained unclear to the user community, perhaps due to its unstable shape. Significantly, the NEWAR GAP FILLER MARK changes according to the width of the glyph. Its behaviour may be represented as follows:
Fig.1: Morphology of the Indo-Nepalese gap filler mark.
Variations in this mark may therefore be regarded as contextual alternatives, rather than separate code points. I suggest, as per the diagram, that no more than three variants need be represented; although the glyph could conceivably incorporate four or more variations (e.g., five vertically stacked dots, at 20% character width), this is probably excessive.
Recommendation: It may be implemented as one code point with contextual alternates, or 3 or more code points corresponding to each quantum of width.
3. Swash Forms
Several glyphs may be alternatively represented with swash forms, created by extending elements of the glyph into surrounding white space. These forms do not require dedicated representation in an encoded repertoire; however, they should be included in any full description of Indo-Newar scribal culture, and font designers might want to incorporate them. Swash forms are often contextually invoked: they are used at the top line of a block of text (upward extension), but may also be seen on the bottom line (downward extension), and even more rarely at the right and left margins, and within interlinear white space. An example:
Fig.2: Swash forms in MS University of Tokyo (Matsunami) 419, f.132r.
Characters routinely represented as swash forms include:
11402 NEWAR LETTER I, 11403 NEWAR LETTER II, (subscribed) 11417 NEWAR LETTER NYA, 1141D NEWAR LETTER TA, 11423 NEWAR LETTER PHA, 11425 NEWAR LETTER BHA, 11429 NEWAR LETTER LA, 1142D NEWAR LETTER SA, 1142E NEWAR LETTER HA, 1143C NEWAR SIGN VIRAMA – downward extension.
4. Revisions To Standard Forms
The following changes to standard forms are recommended – see glyphs highlighted in Fig.3, in which all glyphs have been redrawn from scratch to accord with common scribal practice. The most widespread change is that the headstroke no longer extends past the right descender (which is inconsistent with almost all scribal practice). Standard forms for VOCALIC R, VOCALIC RR, GA, SHA, dependent VOWEL SIGN II, VOCALIC R, VOCALIC RR as well as *VOCALIC L, VOCALIC LL (these should certainly be specified and named) should be altered accordingly. DIGIT ONE should also be changed in order to avoid confusion with SIDDHI.
Fig. 3. Recommended changes to forms in N4184.
5. Some Remaining Questions
5.2 Letter-Numerals: “There are at least 27 such Newar ‘letter numerals’… It may be possible to unify Newar letter-numbers with corresponding Brahmi characters.” The issue here, as far as I can see, is: which letter-numeral conjuncts differ from non-numeral conjuncts of the same letters (all differences should be specified). To put it another way: which letter-numeral conjuncts uniquely signify letter numerals, if any? Perhaps our European colleagues, with their extensive access to funding, institutional support and manuscript sources, could clarify the matter. (Don’t worry, we won’t hold our breath.)
5.3 “Should editorial marks be encoded on a per script basis or would be it reasonable to unify such marks in a pan-Indic block?” (Pandey 2012:13). Out of our hands, but if they aren’t unified, they should be included in the Newar block.
Recent discussion on the proposed Newar Unicode codeblock has been met with silence (signifying disinterest, ignorance, or unqualified approval – or all three, one must assume). Those who did more than glance at the discussion would have been aware that that several areas of the Unicode codespace are expanding rapidly, many of which are going to infringe upon a far wider chunk of Asianists’ and philologists’ territories. In an age of character-constrained discourse, when just a few letters can reveal something important about you – OMG!* – and a picture tells the thousand words you don’t have the time to text, demand for emoticons, emoji and pictographs soars.
@mrJUSTINMARTIN yeah man!!! Be there in 5!
The Symbola font [download] has reasonably good coverage of the newer codeblocks. Other fonts by the designer, George Doulos, show how much work (non-Indological) classicists are putting into the codification of the premodern repertoire.
Symbola specimen, p.10, showing glyphs from the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Emoticons, Transport and Map Symbols, and Alchemical Symbols codeblocks.
Marina Toumpouri [academia.edu]. ‘L’illustration byzantine du Roman de Barlaam et Joasaph’. 3 vols., 792 pp. PhD diss., Université Charles de Gaulle (Lille), 2010.
A worthy study of some real Western Buddhism:
From the Abstract
The Barlaam and Joasaph tale is a text of Buddhist inspiration which tells the story of the son of an Indian king, Joasaph, who, tired of mundane pleasures, is converted by the monk Barlaam and eventually becomes a monk. The Greek version of the Barlaam and Joasaph Romance, the work of Euthyme the Athonite (+1028), monk of Georgian origin, is datable between 975 and 987. The text is known to us in hundred and fifty nine manuscripts, among which six were illustrated, produced between the eleventh and the sixteenth century. The present work is dedicated to the study of the illustrated manuscripts.
That bhikṣu looks awfully out of place in Europe. (Trust me on this.) J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XV 9, fol. 31v
N. Sihlé. Rituels bouddhistes de pouvoir et de violence: La figure du tantriste tibétain. Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses (BEHE 152). Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. 300 p. ISBN: 978-2-503-54470-0. €70. [official site]
“Cette contribution importante à l’anthropologie du bouddhisme tibétain apporte un éclairage nouveau pour penser la violence de l’exorcisme et, à travers la dualité du moine et du tantriste, les champs religieux marqués par la présence de différentes formes de spécialisation religieuse.”
