121–130 of 143 posts
The name of the ship's owner (mohayideen) is Arabic, transliterated into Tamil script. There is a well known history of the Arab trade network throughout Southeast Asia but it's fascinating that this artifact represents a fusion of Arab and Tamil culture. It makes me ponder whether the owner of the ship was himself cross cultural. The Arab presence in Southern India actually predates the advent of Islam, so even it's…
The Tamils originally wrote on dried palm leaves with a sharp scribe. So, if you didn't want to tear the leaf, you had to avoid straight lines and dots. That's why there are so many curves in the script. Also, one of the meanings of my first name "Mani" is literally "Bell". Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_script Also: I'm Tamil.
Interesting! I always thought "Mani" mean't "Gems". At least in Sanskrit Mani is a Bead/Gem.
Bell in Hindi is घंटी (ghanti).
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Is Muhayideen related to the Arabic word "mujahideen" or is it just a coincidence that they look kind of similar?
Many words in places influenced by Arabic (or other Semitic languages) take similar forms, in this case mu_a_i_d (een is plural). Arabic has a triliteral root system and this form is a way of structuring a root to indicate the person who does the thing the root refers to. I don't know if Tamil was influenced by Arabic; in this case it could be an utter coincidence.
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sorry - what is "it" in your comment? Do you mean the medium was often curved, like on the sides of bowls?
I believe they meant carved, as in into stone. "Roman block lettering avoids curves because it was often carved."
The Romans wrote most ephemeral stuff on wax tablets which could be smoothed over for re-use; this is where the phrase "tabula rasa" comes from. Some examples survive and also show curves [2].
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/002_Conr...
[2] http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/newl...
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True even the old inscription (on the bell) is pretty easy to read, compared to some of the old stuff you find in temples in Madurai / Tirupati.
If I remember correctly the inscriptions in Madurai or other temples around South India are in the Grantham Language which is why its much harder for us modern Tamil speakers to read. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantha_alphabet
Wow, first time I've heard of it. Read some of the article. Seems like Malayalam, Sinhalese and one or two other languages are derived from Grantha, and Tamil is a sister language of it.
Also interesting is that the article says that at some period, some documents were written in a mixture of Sanskrit and Grantha, sometimes mixing them even in the same word(!)
Edit: IIRC, I also first got to know about the Modi script via some earlier thread on HN:
Out-of-place artifacts[1] are cool. A really interesting one is the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head[2], a part of a terracotta figurine that was found in a pre-Columbian site in Mexico that is speculated to have Roman origin. Learning more about this is actually kind of hard. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of pseudoarchaeology concerning pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-…
True :) Hadn't remembered this for some years, but your point above reminded me of it: There is a temple in Madurai (Tamil Nadu), or maybe another city in Tamil Nadu (which has tons of temples), where on the tower (gopuram) there are one or more carvings of a man (only the face) with a hat - like a Western hat. Had seen it as a kid when we went on a tour of South India. I remember my relatives saying that it could be that it depicted a Westerner, though the temple was made hundreds of years ago or more.
Out-of-place artifacts[1] are cool. A really interesting one is the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head[2], a part of a terracotta figurine that was found in a pre-Columbian site in Mexico that is speculated to have Roman origin. Learning more about this is actually kind of hard. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of pseudoarchaeology concerning pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-…
>Out-of-place artifacts[1] are cool. True :) Hadn't remembered this for some years, but your point above reminded me of it: There is a temple in Madurai (Tamil Nadu), or maybe another city in Tamil Nadu (which has tons of temples), where on the tower (gopuram) there are one or more carvings of a man (only the face) with a hat - like a Western hat. Had seen it as a kid when we went on a tour of South India. I remember…
Besides that, there's plenty of evidence of pre-Portuguese presence in the Azores. There are theories that everyone from the Phoenicians to the Greeks to the Chinese discovered the island before Portugal did.
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I think you mean something like 'stylus'. A scribe is a person.
A word can have more than one meanings. From https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Ascribe&oq=define%3A... 3. a pointed instrument used for making marks on wood, bricks, etc., to guide a saw or in signwriting.
Lies spread by Satanist band.
3. a pointed instrument used for making [...]
Communist dictionary.
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Palm leaves were commonly used to write in Sinhalese as well, and the alphabet, similarly, is very curvy[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_alphabet
It's fascinating (to me) to think that the medium influences the script - something I had never considered. I wonder if we can find medium-based influences on other scripts, say, Roman and Arabic. My Archaeological/anthropological knowledge doesn't even extend to spelling those words correctly (thank you Chrome spell-checker), so I can't do more than wonder unless someone here... (nudge, nudge)
