Texts cross borders as sound, not as objects

Status: Anticipated · untested

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

When a work composed in one region turns up in another region's collections, it could have arrived two ways: as a travelled object — an imported pothi — or as a re-inscription, a local copy made from dictation, memory, or a briefly borrowed exemplar. The script of the surviving witnesses arbitrates, because imported objects wear foreign scripts while re-inscriptions wear local ones. A recopying economy with short manuscript half-lives and fragile unbound pothis should be overwhelmingly a re-inscription system: vigorous circulation of works with almost no circulation of books. If it holds, the pre-print subcontinent's famous textual connectivity was carried by people and recitation channels rather than by a book trade, and the rarity of foreign-script manuscripts in any regional collection is its measurable signature.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

In the NGMPP/NGMCP catalogue, among pre-1800 manuscripts of works recorded in the Pandit database as composed outside the Nepal region, fewer than 10% will be written in scripts foreign to the Nepalese/North Indian copying sphere (for example, southern scripts), despite a substantial share of the works being of southern composition. Primary clause: the sub-10% foreign-script share among foreign-composed works.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Script fields in the NGMPP/NGMCP catalogue joined to work-origin regions from the Pandit database.

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

This conjecture is bridged, as an L1 lead, onto these Inferpedia subject pages.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Generated blind in a single Write with no reads, web access, or database queries; this is the second attempt for wave W14 after a prior instance died to a network error before writing its packet.

Novelty / leakage triage

anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run

Sanskrit's strong orality and wide regional script variation (works re-inscribed locally rather than books travelling) are well established, but the falsifiable signature — <10% foreign-script witnesses among foreign-composed works in NGMPP — is un-run.

'Sanskrit' (Wikipedia) — oral primacy; script varied widely by region/time
'The Public Life of Sanskrit Manuscripts' (academia.edu)

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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