JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2630
Date: 2003-09-29
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2
PROPOSAL SUMMARY FORM TO ACCOMPANY SUBMISSIONSFOR ADDITIONS TO THE REPERTOIRE OF ISO/IEC 106461
Please fill all the sections A, B and C below.
(Please read Principles and Procedures Document for guidelines and details before filling this form.)
See http://www.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/summaryform.html for latest Form.
See http://www.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/principles.html for latest Principles and Procedures document.
See http://www.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/roadmaps.html for latest roadmaps.

A. Administrative
1. Title:
Proposal to add one combining diacritic to the UCS
2. Requester's name:Andrew Glass, Stefan Baums, Richard Salomon
3. Requester type (Member body/Liaison/Individual contribution):
Individual contribution
4. Submission date:
8 October 2002
5. Requester's reference (if applicable): _____________________________________________________________
6. (Choose one of the following:)
This is a complete proposal:
Yesor,More information will be provided later:_______________
B. Technical - General
1. (Choose one of the following:)
a. This proposal is for a new script (set of characters):
No
Proposed name of script: _________________________________________________________.
b. The proposal is for addition of character(s) to an existing block:Yes
Name of the existing block:Combining Diacritical Marks
2. Number of characters in proposal:
1
3. Proposed category (see section II, Character Categories):
Combining
4. Proposed Level of Implementation (1, 2 or 3) (see clause 14, ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000):3
Is a rationale provided for the choice?
______________
If Yes, reference: ________________________________________________________________
5. Is a repertoire including character names provided?
Yesa. If YES, are the names in accordance with the 'character naming guidelines
in Annex L of ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000?
Yes
b. Are the character shapes attached in a legible form suitable for review?
Yes
6. Who will provide the appropriate computerized font (ordered preference: True Type, or PostScript format) for
publishing the standard? ________________________________________________________________
If available now, identify source(s) for the font (include address, e-mail, ftp-site, etc.) and indicate the tools
used: Andrew Glass, http://staff.washington.edu/asg/Downloads/GU.zip__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7. References:a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts etc.) provided? Yes
b. Are published examples of use (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, or other sources)of proposed characters attached?
Yes
8. Special encoding issues:
Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing (if applicable) such as input,
presentation, sorting, searching, indexing, transliteration etc. (if yes please enclose information)?
The character behaves just like existing combining diacriticals
9. Additional Information:
Submitters are invited to provide any additional information about Properties of the proposed Character(s) or Scriptthat will assist in correct understanding of and correct linguistic processing of the proposed character(s) or script.
Examples of such properties are: Casing information, Numeric information, Currency information, Display behaviour
information such as line breaks, widths etc., Combining behaviour, Spacing behaviour, Directional behaviour, Default
Collation behaviour, relevance in Mark Up contexts, Compatibility equivalence and other Unicode normalization
related information. See the Unicode standard at http://www.unicode.org for such information on other scripts. Also
see http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeCharacterDatabase.html and associated Unicode Technical
Reports for information needed for consideration by the Unicode Technical Committee for inclusion in the UnicodeStandard.
1Form number: N2352-F (Original 1994-10-14; Revised 1995-01, 1995-04, 1996-04, 1996-08, 1999-03, 2001-05, 2001-09)

N2352-F
2001-09-04

Page 1 of 4

C. Technical - Justification
1. Has this proposal for addition of character(s) been submitted before?
No
If YES explain _________________________________________________________________________
2. Has contact been made to members of the user community (for example: National Body,
user groups of the script or characters, other experts, etc.)?
Yes
If YES, with whom? British Library/University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project
If YES, available relevant documents: see attachments
3. Information on the user community for the proposed characters (for example:size, demographics, information technology use, or publishing use) is included?
Scholars
Reference: ___________________________________________________________________________
4. The context of use for the proposed characters (type of use; common or rare)
Scholarly; Rare
Reference: ___________________________________________________________________________
5. Are the proposed characters in current use by the user community?
Yes
If YES, where? Reference: Scholars worldwide
6. After giving due considerations to the principles in Principles and Procedures document (a WG 2 standing
document) must the proposed characters be entirely in the BMP?
Yes
If YES, is a rationale provided?
Yes
If YES, reference: There is just one and it should be kept with other combining diacriticals
7. Should the proposed characters be kept together in a contiguous range (rather than being scattered)? _______
8. Can any of the proposed characters be considered a presentation form of an existing
character or character sequence?
No
If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
No____________
If YES, reference: ________________________________________________________
9. Can any of the proposed characters be encoded using a composed character sequence of either
existing characters or other proposed characters?
NoIf YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
______________
If YES, reference:______________
10. Can any of the proposed character(s) be considered to be similar (in appearanceor function) to an existing character?
Yes
If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
Yes___________
If YES, reference: See below_______________________________________________
11. Does the proposal include use of combining characters and/or use of composite sequences(see clauses 4.12 and 4.14 in ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000)?
Yes
If YES, is a rationale for such use provided?
Yes
If YES, reference: see attachment
Is a list of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images (graphic symbols)
provided?
Yes
If YES, reference: see attachment
12. Does the proposal contain characters with any special properties such as
control function or similar semantics?
No
If YES, describe in detail (include attachment if necessary)______________
13. Does the proposal contain any Ideographic compatibility character(s)?
No
If YES, is the equivalent corresponding unified ideographic character(s) identified? ____________
If YES, reference: ________________________________________________________

N2352-F
2001-09-04

Page 2 of 4Proposal
Since the beginning of the twentieth century over a thousand wooden documents written in theKharoṣṭhī script have been discovered in Central Asia. The discovery of these documents haslead to numerous studies and publications, principally: A. M. Boyer, E. J. Rapson, and E. Senart,
Kharoṣṭhī Inscriptions Discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan, 3 pts, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1920–9. There has been renewed interest in these documents following thediscovery of the British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments (see Salomon 1999). As a result it isnecessary to be able to encode the transliteration system used by Boyer, Rapson, and Senart inmodern publications in electronic form. There is one diacritical mark used in this transliteration
system which is not found in the existing Unicode set of combining diacritical marks, so we
propose that it be added to that set as follows:
U+0350COMBINING DOUBLE RING BELOW

It has been suggested that U+032B COMBINING INVERTED DOUBLE ARCH BELOW ( ̫ ),U+033C COMBINING SEAGULL BELOW ( ̬ ) or a combination of the two ( ̫̬ ) could be used
as approximations. However, it is felt that this would not do justice to the diacritic’s independent
nature, nor in most implementations result in a satisfactory rendering of it.
The shape for this combining character is based on a visual correspondence with the Kharoṣṭhī
diacritical mark it transliterates:
KharoṣṭhīBUTransliterationbh

Unfortunately, the state of our knowledge of the language of these documents does not permit usto identify the phonetic value of this sign beyond Rapson’s suggestion that it may represent amodified vowel sound (Boyer, Rapson, and Senart 1920–9: 299). This diacritic, when used forthe transliteration of Kharoṣṭhī, only occurs in combination with the vowels a and u, namely inthe akṣaras: b, bh, l, s, ś,  (see Glass 2000: 37, 43–44).
A separate proposal to encode Kharoṣṭhī in Plane 1 of ISO/IEC 10646 includes a combining
double ring below. However, this code point (U+10A0D) is intended for use with the Kharoṣṭhīscript, written from right to left. It is desirable to have a distinct code point for the transliteration
character despite the similarities in appearance since all other code points required for thetransliteration of Kharoṣṭhī are included in the BMP. For font development purposes it isdesirable to be able to restrict a transliteration font to coverage of just code points in the BMP. In
comprehensive fallback Unicode fonts, a single COMBINING DOUBLE RING BELOW glyph
may be unsuitable for combination with both Latin-script and Kharoṣṭhī.

N2352-F
2001-09-04

Page 3 of 4

Text Samples

Figure 1. Sample text from the first publication to use COMBINING DOUBLE RING BELOW(Boyer, Rapson, and Senart 1920–9: 185).

Figure 2. Sample text including COMBINING DOUBLE RING BELOW
from a recent publication (Allon 2001: 181).

References
Allon, Mark. 2001. Three Ekottarikāgama-Type Sūtras: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments 12and 14. Gandhāran Buddhist Texts 2. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Boyer, A. M., E. J. Rapson, and E. Senart. 1920–9. Kharoṣṭhī Inscriptions Discovered by Sir
Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan. 3 pts. (pt. 3 by Rapson and P. S. Noble). Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Glass, Andrew. 2000. “A Preliminary Study of Kharoṣṭhī Manuscript Paleography.” Master’s
thesis, Department of Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington.
Salomon, Richard. 1999. Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra: The British LibraryKharoṣṭhī Fragments. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Comments or Discussion
Please send any responses to this proposal to Andrew Glass (email: asg@u.washington.edu).
Please also CC to Richard Salomon (email: rsalomon@u.washington.edu) and Stefan Baums(email: baums@u.washington.edu).

N2352-F
2001-09-04

Page 4 of 4