Lal wrote:We are going around in loops without addressing the root issue.
Yes, as you say transliteration appears to be the root issue.
rajitha7 wrote:
Dhammanando wrote:
in the the case of attā and atthaṃ the source of error appears to be: (1) the absence of the aspirated consonant [t̪ʰ] in the modern Sinhala phonemic system, which leads Sinhalese to pronounce ‘attā’ and ‘attha’ identically
When the Sutta was freshly minted 2000 years ago it appeared as follows. The language is Pali but the script is Sinhala...
Do you see an aspirated consonant here? How can there be an aspirated consonant in the Sinhala script?
I am ingorant of Pali and Sinhalese. According to Wikipedia, however,
Wikipedia wrote:Sinhalese is often considered two alphabets, or an alphabet within an alphabet, due to the presence of two sets of letters. The core set, known as the śuddha siṃhala (pure Sinhalese, ශුද්ධ සිංහලimg) or eḷu hōḍiya (Eḷu alphabet එළු හෝඩිය img), can represent all native phonemes. In order to render Sanskrit and Pali words, an extended set, the miśra siṃhala (mixed Sinhalese, මිශ්ර සිංහලimg), is available....
All native phonemes of the Sinhala spoken today can be represented in śuddha, while in order to render special Sanskrit and Pali sounds, one can fall back on miśra siṃhala. This is most notably necessary for the graphemes for the Middle Indic phonemes that the Sinhalese language lost during its history, such as aspirates.
It gives ථ as the miśra letter for the aspirate [t̪a]. Is this wrong?
Lal wrote:We need to remember that when the Tipiataka was written down 2000 years ago, it was written in Pali, but with Sinhala script): For example, Tilakkhana are stated in the Tipitaka in Sinhala script as අනිච්ච, දුක්ඛ , අනත්ත.
If we just take the word අනත්ත it is written in English as "anatta" or "anattha" depending on who writes. Both represent අනත්ත.
It seems instead to be the difference between අනත්ත "anatta" and අනත්ථ "anattha," right? As covered earlier in the thread, the comment on අත්ථ:
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f ... 40#p421449
The argument against this could maybe be that the original manuscripts do not use miśra letters, or particular suttas have been typed wrong? I guess that could be proven by showing the digitized manuscripts. This is my very uninformed understanding of the issue under discussion anyway.