Dear Dominik and all, The sign that you are referring to is widely used already in the oldest dated manuscript that we are using for digital critical edition of the Nyāyabhāṣya in Leipzig, a paper manuscript from Jaisalmer in Devanagari, datable to 1222. We decided to transcribe it as a hyphen (-), since it is mostly (though not exclusively) used to separate *akṣara*s within a word at the end of the line and before virtual string holes. The hyphen sign suggested itself to us intuitively, because its usage in the manuscript corresponds roughly to the usage of a hyphen in our modern practice of writing in Latin script. In the case of this manuscript, the interpretation of this sign as a line filler is not the most obvious choice, because the sign is used frequently in cases where the line would already be filled completely without the use of this special sign, like here: [image: image.png] Quite frequently, when the end of the line coincides with the end of a word, the scribe left some space without using the hyphenation sign : [image: image.png] I have not fully investigate the matter, because it is not of central importance for the creation of the documentation of variant readings in our project (not to speak of the critical edition), but apparently the scribe was not absolutely consistent in his usage of this sign. With best wishes, Philipp __________________________ Dr. Philipp A. Maas Research Associate Institut für Indologie und Zentralasienwissenschaften Universität Leipzig ___________________________ https://spp1448.academia.edu/PhilippMaas Am Di., 12. Nov. 2019 um 19:43 Uhr schrieb Dominik Wujastyk < wujastyk@gmail.com>:
I've got some manuscripts that use a line-ending filler, a bit like the Roman-script hyphen. In one case, I think it explains a false reading in an apograph.
My B witness (pṛṣṭhamātra but undated) reads
[image: image.png] That's yasya with a line-filling character that looks like a daṇḍa. But it isn't a daṇḍa. The nearest thing I can call it is a scribe's hyphen. The line below, pra- is the same. The full word is pra-bhākaraḥ. It wouldn't be right to transcribe as daṇḍa. But more to the point, I want to record that this Devanāgarī "hyphen" suggests that the reading yasyā in witness U is a crux showing U to be an apograph of B. I've inserted an explanatory <note> into the transcription of B at this point:
yasya|<note anchored="true" type="comment on reading">This end-of-line daṇḍa may show that the yasyā reading in U proves U to be an apograph.</note><lb/>
But there must be a better way of expressing all this. Any ideas?
Best, Dominik
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