Dear Jonathan, You might find Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma's 2012 article in *Revue d'histoire des mathématiques*, "The Kaṭapayādi system of numerical notation and its spread outside Kerala" helpful in historicizing this question.
Take care, Eric On Mon, Aug 9, 2021 at 12:02 PM Jonathan Peterson via INDOLOGY < [email protected]> wrote: > Dear list members, > > > I've wanted to consult the list for some time about the use of chronograms > in Sanskrit texts. My exposure to chronograms was first as a student of > Persian literature and court-historical writing (tārīkh), where the Abjad > system of gematrics is regularly exploited to give a date of an event or > composition as a secondary meaning of a phrase or word. A well-known > example from the Mughal context being: > > ای وای پادشاه من از بام اوفتاد > "*ay, wāy, pādishāh-i man az bām ūftād*” > "Oh! Woe! My emperor fell from the roof!" > > After letting “ay” "fall from the roof,” i.e., subtracting it from the > gematric value of the rest of the phrase, we get the Hijri date of > Humayun’s fall from his library and subsequent death. > > For a couple years now I’ve been nurturing a side-project on the poetic > writings of a student of Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita named Nīlakaṇṭha Śukla. > Nīlakaṇṭha lived in Bananas in the seventeenth century. He uses chronograms > in the closing verses of a handful of his literary writings. I know that > chronograms had been used in inscriptional contexts for some time before > Nīlakaṇṭha, but I would like to know more about their use both in > inscriptional contexts and in Sanskrit or vernacular literary/poetic > contexts. Were chronograms commonly practiced before the age of bilingual > Arabic/Persian-Sanskrit inscriptions of the Sultanate period? Are there > geographical patterns to their use? What are the range/frequency of uses in > literary contexts? > > Before the changes in the Indology website, I searched for this in the > archives and recall seeing a short discussion from the 90’s or early 2000’s > on chronograms in inscriptional contexts, but I can no longer find it. Any > information or insights would be greatly appreciated. > > > Best wishes, > > Jonathan Peterson > Department for the Study of Religion > Centre for South Asian Studies > University of Toronto > > > > _______________________________________________ > INDOLOGY mailing list > [email protected] > https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology > -- Eric Gurevitch PhD Candidate, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science University of Chicago [email protected]
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