This is a comment about L2/13-007.
A 1300-years old temple with rare inscriptions has been saved from
destruction:
"R.
Nagaswamy, former Director of the Tamil Nadu State Department of
Archaeology, said the
Saivite saint Tirugnana Sambandar, who lived in the seventh century
CE, had sung verses
praising the temple’s Sivalinga. Rajendra Chola-I’s inscription
called the deity Nethroddharaka
Swami (i.e., the deity will cure eye ailments)."
Dr. Nagaswamy is visiting his friends and relatives in USA, and he
asked me whether
Grantha script is available in Unicode to write sacred texts of
Sanskrit and Tamil are
available. I mentioned about this week's meeting and Michael
Everson's proposal
to include the letters needed to write Tevaram texts in Grantha
orthography.
Another
scholar, and large publisher from Chennai (=Madras) who initiated
writing
sacred
Tamil texts in 19 scripts, including Grantha, was also involved in
saving
the
1300-years old Hindu temple. Sri. M. K. Sachithananthan also wants
to
print
Tevaram hymns in Grantha once beautiful Grantha fonts become
available, just like Malayalam or Tamil fonts from MS (Vijaya, Latha),
Apple IT
corporations. Both of them have requested that Dravidian letters be
encoded
for use
in Grantha block.
in
classical Tamil language and meter, in
19 scripts, including Grantha.
Its commentary pages run to several thousand pages and immensely
popular
among south Indians who worship the Hindu gods like Shiva. See, for
example,
the place allotted for Tamil hymns in Grantha script (3rd script
among 19 lipi-s (scripts):
We are
reading the comment by P. R. Nakkeeran on Grantha script writing
Dravidian languages like Tamil. While we welcome the Govt.'s
approval
of
writing Tamil hymns and names in Grantha script, their
recommendation
to use
letters from Tamil block does not work, and that is not the way
characters are encoded in Unicode standard. For example, between
Kannada
and Telugu scripts there are common letters, but they are
encoded
atomically in each. The problem in using Tamil letters in
archaic
Grantha is this: The modern Tamil letters are of different glyph
shape,
and are
not usable in archaic Grantha. Besides Tamil letters do not have
Chillu
forms, and are never used in vertically stacks of conjunct
consonants.
And,
Grantha fonts have two styles: western and eastern, and the atomic
Dravidian letters in Grantha block will be able to support both
styles
of fonts
in Unicode grantha web pages and press software to print
Grantha
books. Printing on paper is moving from 8-bit fonts to
unicode
slowly in Tamil Nadu, a much needed progress.
Dr.
Nagaswamy, a world-renowned expert on Grantha epigraphy,
Indian
art hisory and archaeology, said he can write Tevaram (Tamil)
verses
in
archaic Grantha
script and send to Unicode authorities for encoding these
needed
letters.
N.
Ganesan