On Some Systems of Marking the Vedic Accent in Manuscripts Written in the Grantha Script

The present article presents the preliminary outcomes of an ongoing study on the signs and the methods used for the representation of the Vedic accent in the Grantha script – Grantha being the name of the script traditionally used in the Tamil-speaking South of India for writing the Sanskrit language. In standard works on the Vedic and Sanskrit languages mention is made of some (usually four) “standard” methods used for marking the accent, with one and the same Vedic text (or, more often, all the texts of a Vedic śākhā) invariably following one and the same method. As will be shown in the present article, the greater part of the Grantha manuscripts deviate from the standard methods, as regards the shape, number and function of the diacritics employed. The present study is based on the manuscripts beloging to three collections, i.e. École française d’Extrême-Orient, Institut français de Pondichéry and Cambridge University Library.