SuttaCentral
VO The Lao Tipitaka officially publish in both Pali and Lao scripts
INTRO: The Lao Tipitaka has been officially published in both Pali and Lao scripts, marking a significant milestone in making the teachings of the Buddha more accessible to the public. This landmark project was spearheaded by the Buddhist Fellowship Organisation of the Lao PDR.
If you get to the end of the video it sounds like a large number of books were published with only the Lao (without the Pali) which is probably a good thing to bring the price down and increase visibility.
I’m guessing when they say “Pali script” they just mean Pali language. Or in Laos is there a different script used for writing Pali?
Yeah this misunderstanding is really widespread. For those who might be watching:
I am writing in the English language, using the Latin (or Roman) script, which is used widely for writing European and other languages.
The language we call Pali is written in many different scripts. This is because Indian languages are written phonetically, so all you have to do is represent the sounds.
If you go to SuttaCentral, eg. here you’ll see Pali written in Latin script.
Now if you go to “views” “change Pali script” and click “lao” you’ll see this
Exactly the same text, same language, different script.
Thanks to Vinodh’s awesome script changer, we can show the Pali text in dozens of different scripts. Such as Wancho, which I have no idea what it is!
For a long time, the main script used to write Pali was Brahmi. If there is any “proper” Pali script, this is what it looks like.
But it really doesn’t make any difference. Contemporary Pali is usually written in the local script. The international conventional is to use the Latin script, which was standardized by European scholars over a century ago.
Anyway, congratulations to the Lao Sangha and the Buddhist Fellowship Organisation of the Lao PDR. 
I thought I had heard there might be other “older” scripts used in SEA that might be used for Pali or other literary works. Does that sound familiar to anyone?
Here’s the cover from the press release:
It says ພາສາລາວ… So that would be a translation, right?
Modern Thai has a few special and “obsolete” characters that are used only for writing Pāli/Sanskrit which Thais need to be taught to be able to read. There’s a way to write Pāli “karaoke style” using only the contemporary letters everyone knows. But I wouldn’t call that, exactly, a different script.
Some older texts in Thai do have fancy old scripts that are a bit hard to read… the line between “a different font” and “a different script” is a bit blurry…
Unfortunately Noto Sans Brahmi, the most widely available Brāhmī font (and as far as i know the only open source one) and i’m pretty sure the one seen in this screenshot too, doesn’t do conjunct consonants. As a result it is technically legible, but definitely not proper Brāhmī.
Apologies for the offtopic.
Yes, you’re probably thinking of Khom, which was originally used by the Khmer but widely adopted in pre-modern Thailand too.
Yeah, I’m not familiar enough with Brahmi to say, but you can add your voice to this thread which discusses this bug on Github.
Are you sure it is a font issue? Here is the (Sanskrit) word/name brāhmī written in the Brahmi script and it does seem to me that that’s the way it is supposed to look like.
𑀩𑁆𑀭𑀸𑀳𑁆𑀫𑀻
Screenshot:
This is namastasmai bhagavate’rhate saṃyaksambuddhāya (Sanskrit) - which seems OK?
𑀦𑀫𑀲𑁆𑀢𑀲𑁆𑀫𑁃 𑀪𑀕𑀯𑀢𑁂’𑀭𑁆𑀳𑀢𑁂 𑀲𑀁𑀬𑀓𑁆𑀲𑀫𑁆𑀩𑀼𑀤𑁆𑀥𑀸𑀬
Screenshot:
and here is the Pali form of the same phrase (namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa)
𑀦𑀫𑁄 𑀢𑀲𑁆𑀲 𑀪𑀕𑀯𑀢𑁄 𑀅𑀭𑀳𑀢𑁄 𑀲𑀫𑁆𑀫𑀸𑀲𑀫𑁆𑀩𑀼𑀤𑁆𑀥𑀲𑁆𑀲
Screenshot:
Obviously Sanskrit conjuncts are or can be much more frequent and more complicated than Pali/Prakrit (which is why Pali was created as a literary register in the first place to make reading and writing the tipitaka simpler in the early centuries of writing in India). You’d notice that the Ashokan edicts in Brahmi are almost free of conjunct consonants as it drops almost all conjuncts from the spoken language (Sanskrit) - while Pali texts phonetically simplify the Sanskrit in a different way, by doubling the same consonant (or unaspirated/aspirated consonant pair) rather than dropping the conjuncts altogether.
I think this issue that appears in the SamyuttaNikaya screenshot above is local to Suttacentral, perhaps some font encoding setting that doesnt work as it should.
It is, see the Github link posted earlier. Your examples are not in Noto Sans Brahmi, but quite likely in Segoe UI Historic.
Ah OK, that is indeed the case, when I type in sambuddhassa in Brahmi, the Noto Sans Brahmi does render it incorrectly as follows:
In which case it is easily fixed by using a different font locally? To me it shows correctly, but I’ve already installed the Segoe UI Historic and many other Indic fonts so it probably is picking one of the others automatically.
It is quite intuitive and natural to read Pali in Brahmi unlike the Roman script. I’ve already thanked Dr. Vinod Rajan before but I take this opportunity again to thank him for offering his transliteration engine free for public use.
You wouldn’t happen to know whether this is freely available, or tied to Windows?
It seems not, you need a license to use it on the web. What we can do, though, is set Segoe UI Historic as the primary font and Noto as the first fallback.
