Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c4.16

c4.16

A few words must be added in connection with the method of transcription. In transcribing Sanskrit the commonly accepted device of diacritical marks has been adopted. The language of the Dohās being unanimously accepted to be Western Apabhraṃśa, the propriety of the use of ‘j’ to the exclusion of ‘y’. and the use of ‘s’ to the exclusion of ‘ś’ or ‘ṣ’ cannot be questioned. But difficulty arises in the choice between ‘b’ and ‘v’. With the advice of Dr. S. K. Chatterji, M.A., D.Lit., the writer has used ‘v’ all along in the transcription of the Dohās and ‘b’ initially and ‘v’ medially and finally in the transcription of Bengali songs. Another point to be noticed is that the phonology of modern Bengali, as also of many other modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars, seldom allows the retention of final vowels, and the medial vowel also drops when the word is composed of more than two syllables; but the dropping is never indicated in orthography. The writer has dropped the medial and final vowels in orthography, where they are dropped in actual pronunciation. The principle of transcription has often been adopted in transcribing the proper names, but rigorous consistency could not be maintained in this matter, as many of the Indian names have already been naturalised in English. Corruptions and mistakes in the spelling of old and middle Bengali texts have never been interfered with. For typographical difficulties nasalisation of vowels had to be indicated by the addition of ‘m’ with the vowels. The writer begs to draw the attention of the reader to another important point. He has found many mistakes and corruptions in the reading of the manuscripts, both Sanskrit and Bengali. These also have not been freely handled unless the mistake or the corruption has been apparent.