The Mahānubhāva Sakaḷa Lipī

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1474-0699|33|2|328-334

ISSN: 0041-977x

Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol.33, Iss.2, 1970-06, pp. : 328-334

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Abstract

It has been known for many years that the Mahānubhāvas used ciphers for the transmission of much of their religious literature in Marathi. They devised a number of such ciphers which are known in the sect by names such as sakaḷa, sundarī, anka lipī, etc., but of all these sakala lipī is by far the commonest—no doubt because its extreme simplicity commended it to the scribes. Its invention is traditionally ascribed to Ravalovyāsa, the author of Sahyādrī-varnana, some time around A.D. 1335, but the earliest references to it are in fifteenth-century texts which simply call it ravalobāsāci nāgara līpa. One text of approximately the same date, however, refers to it as sakalita līpa and within the living tradition of the sect it is always known as sakala lipī or sakalī. The name has been variously derived from Old Marathi sakala ‘all’, because it was used throughout the sect, and from Skt. sankalita, because it is full of abbreviations. The former seems more plausible. The cipher was the first to be introduced and is the most widely used, whereas later, more complex ciphers tend to be the private preserve of one or other of the Mahānubhāva āmnāya or sub-sects.