In the Shrine of the Heart. Sants of Rajasthan from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
24 Mar 2023
DOI: 10.11588/hasp.1151
Note on Editorial Principles and Transliteration
The sources of the texts in this collection are listed in Appendix 1. Wherever possible, texts were edited by collating manuscripts from the seventeenth century with each other or with modern editions. The ancient manuscripts represent the then current phonemic rules, but also current scribal conventions. Some of the published texts were copied from standard printed editions. These tend to standardize orthography according to sanskritized Hindi. This however contravenes the phonemic rules of that earlier period. More particularly, it does not heed the then prevalent syllabic structure which disfavours conjunct consonants, as, for example, in sidha, which may represent siddha, ‘perfect‘, and siddhi, ‘perfection’. The phonetic realization of this and similar words would depend on the Sanskrit or vernacular language key a speaker might choose.
Manuscripts of the period under review or a little later are related to speech rather like musical scores to musical performance. Not all that appears in performance is reflected by the script. This is particularly true when it comes to metre, which may look faulty on the written page but must have been correctly executed by the speaker or adapted to the the rhythmic cycle of music by the singer. Rajasthan’s regional languages typically feature suprasegmental nasals that are non-phonemic but distributed automatically according to vowel position. Historically old ā before a nasal consonant is always nasalized as, for example, in [rã:mǝ], ‘Rām’, or [jã:n-], verbal root jān-, ‘to know’. This phonetic feature spills over, on the one hand leading to spontaneous nasalization as, for example, in nāhīṃ changing freely with nāṃhī , or, on the other hand, causing the omission of morphologically distinctive nasals, such as in jāṃhi, ‘you (will/may) go’, versus jāṃhiṃ, ‘they (will/may) go’. The forms may change freely in writing, and it may not be easy to determine which form is actually meant. Certain unnasalized forms have become accepted, that is, lexically recorded variants of more common nasalized ones, such as samidra, varying with samindara, samandara, and the sanskritic samudra. There is no reason to tamper with such variety with a view to standardization. Scribal usage of the period allowed also for both श and स to represent the dental sibilant so that sudra and shudrām, ‘Shudra‘, and suṣa and shuṣa, ‘happiness’, may stand side by side. In only two cases, the spelling of printed editions has been replaced by that of the earlier period. One is the anunāsik, which does not occur in early Sant manuscripts. In these and accordingly also in this book it is represented by the anusvār. The other is kha, representing in manuscripts both kha and ṣa. This usage has been retained.
As this volume addresses a wider readership, editorial decisions regarding variant readings have normally not been discussed. In so far, the texts published from manuscripts do not form critical editions.
As for transcription, the system followed for Hindi and related languages is in principle the one used by R.S. McGregor, Hindi–English Dictionary, Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Diacritics in the names of modern authors writing in Indian languages have been retained only in bibliographical references. Names of places and dynasties appear without diacritics unless they occur with these in quotations or in Indian language material.
In quotations from early modern works, in which the inherent syllable-final -a is still functional, this has been retained.
Terms established in both the Sanskrit and vernacular tradition have often, though not consistently, been transliterated like Sanskrit.