doc about Sanskrit

doc/pronouncing_sanskrit.md

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+# Pronouncing Sanskrit in a Tibetan context
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+The history of languages used in the Buddhist Communities in South India is a rich and complex one, but it seems clear that the the generalization of the use of Sanskrit in a Buddhist context is a relatively late development.
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+For an historical perspective on this issue, see Ingo Strauch, "Lost in Translation? Canonical Languages and Linguistic Diversity of Early Versions of the Prātimokṣasūtra" in Orna Almogi (ed.), "Evolution of Scriptures, Formation of Canons: The Buddhist Case." Indian and Tibetan Studies Series 13. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2022, pp. 5-41 ([PDF](https://www.academia.edu/90522016/Lost_in_Translation_Canonical_Languages_and_Linguistic_Diversity_of_Early_Versions_of_the_Pr%C4%81timok%E1%B9%A3as%C5%ABtra)).
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+The history of the pronounciation of Sanskrit in the Tibetic areas (especially the mantras) has been a topic of interest for a few Tibetans but has never been studied from a historical perspective, partly because Sanskrit cannot really be considered to be a natural language in Tibet so it is difficult to analyse it using linguistic methods.
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+##### Classical Sanskrit ?
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+This section should be reworked by an expert in Sanskrit, which I am not. The way Sanskrit is written can be interpreted as being purely phonologic. In that view, each letter can be pronounced as it was at the time of Panini. This means that བཛྲ། should be interpreted as [vajra]. While this makes sense to an extent, the specifics of the realization are often left out in this view, but we could imagine using the Classical Sanskrit pronounciation /vɐdʑɾɐ/.
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+##### A historical perspective
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+Historically, the relevance of the Classical Sanskrit pronounciation has likely been very limitted. Most Buddhist masters who went to Tibet were not native speakers of Sanskrit and were likely pronouncing Sanskrit in a way that was very close to the pronounciation of their native language.
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+While evidence for that should be collected properly, it seems reasonable to form the hypothesis that in most cases, the Indic masters from Nepal, Bengal and Kashmir did pronounce the sanskrit "va" as "ba". We can thus form the hypothesis that the Tibetans did not "distord" the Sanskrit they received and, on the contrary, preserved the pronounciations of the masters of India they were in contact with.
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+This is further exemplified by two works of Tibetan scholars (Sakya Pandita and Situ Panchen, references to be added) who went to Nepal and India to learn the proper pronounciation of Sanskrit and also found that the pronounciation as "ba" was the norm.
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+While the Classical Sanskrit pronounciation is relatively well known and could be automated easily, this is unfortunately not the case for the pronounciation that is the most common in Tibet. More research needs to be done to properly document it.