Bhagavad Gita in Thai Script

[Richard W]

Is it possible to buy a copy of the Bhagavad Gita written in Thai letters in the normal way for Sanskrit?  I nearly bought a copy of ภควัต-กีตา ฉบับเดิม (the Thai edition of [i]the Bhagavad Gita As It Is[/i]), but I found that the Thai script was actually a phonetic transliteration of the Devanagari version, with such oddities as do dek for Devanagari da (द), instead of the tho thahan one sees in the etymology section of Thai dictionaries.  I next tried the translation  'the Bhagavadgita : A Thai Version', only to find that it did not contain the Sanskrit at all.  (Preview pages were restricted to the introduction.)  I'm looking for something that a library might keep a copy of, so that it is 'durably archived' in the Wiktionary sense.

[rose33]

You could email Stuart Jay Raj to ask him. He would know, or know where to ask.

 

DM, if you need his email address.

[Badger18]

Have you come across the Aksharamukha script converter? It's an online transliteration tool that supports quite a range of scripts. I haven't used it with very long texts but if you found an electronic copy of the BG in Devanagari you might be able to transliterate it that way.

 

Curious why you would want to do this by the way.

 

Edit: sanskritdocuments.org will display it in Thai script. It actually uses the Aksharamukha converter to do the transliteration. I am not into Wikipedia and have no clue whether that would count as durably archived under their rules.

[Richard W]

Sanskrit is alleged to be written in the Thai script, and I'd like to document some of this usage.  However, in practical terms it's easier to find examples of English written in the Thai script or Thai written in the Roman script, neither of which would be accepted on Wiktionary.  I'm pretty sure the Sanskrit etyma  in the RID would no more be accepted on their own than would the Khmer etyma, which are also given in the Thai script.

 

The reason for choosing the Bhagavad Gita is that out of copyright translations are available.  If I felt automatically generated transcriptions would be acceptable, I could use a transliteration of the

Bengali or Devanagari script (I forget which it is) translation into Sanskrit of the New Testament.  There are public domain translations into English of the New Testament.

[Badger18]

I don't understand why you are talking about English <> Thai transliterations or English translations of the Sanskrit text.

 

Wasn't there a period when the Mahayana was the dominant tradition in Thailand? Their texts are largely in Sanskrit I believe. Maybe some old transliterations have been digitized.

 

Is there a separate copyright in the transliteration? Not sure as there isn't much skill involved and I seem to remember this makes a difference - but obviously the transliteration may be a lot more recent than the work itself.

[Richard W]

In general, I don't believe one can transliterate a text oneself and then quote the transliteration as an example of the spelling in that writing system.

 

In general, transliteration is not copyrightable - nowadays it is often delegated to computers.  There may be some creative leeway when the 'transliteration' is not dictated by the text, as with the RTGS, e.g. Phetburi v, Phetchaburi.

 

I haven't heard of any Mahayana texts around in the Thai script.  I'd expect them to be in the Khom script.