Tonal Notation of Indic scripts in Mainland Southeast Asia

2.6.2 The regularization of ß: {-:}
{-h’} became unused in spellings of open rhyme in Heavy tone in
the middle of 13c. Also ‘long’ vowel symbols became obsolete in the
late 13c. Though the instances of {-:} are attested also in inscriptions
after 13c, its occurrence is sporadic as before.
The ‘indifference’ of the script to Heavy tone began to change in
Tetkale-Taungkyaung Temple Inscription (873 ME/AD 1511) slightly.
In this inscription, open rhymes /-a/ in Heavy tone are unexceptionally
written as {-a:}. The same thing is applied to Kaunghmudaw Temple Inscription(998
ME/AD 1636). However, other rhymes than /-a/ in Heavy
tone are still indistinctive from those in Level tone.
Again, the first case of spreading {-:} to rhymes other than /-a/ is
found in the ink inscription of Uyingyi Temple mentioned in the previous
section. In the ink inscription, {-:} cooccurs not only with open
rhymes, but also with closed rhymes. 20
(33) acW`m¸:{@a
cwam’:} ‘ability’ (l.1.)
Tuiw¸:{thVw’:}
‘poke’ (l.6.)
Moreover, the inscription is epoch-making in that {-:} cooccurs with
not ‘short’ but ‘long’ vowel symbols in open rhymes.
(34) Ûk¯:{krii:} ‘big, great’ (l.11.)
BurA:{bhu raa:} ‘Buddha’ (l.6, 8, 10.)
aA:Tut¸{@aa:thut’} ‘strive’ (l.1.)
eKYAMKYA:{khyo(k’)khyaa:} 21 ‘be alarmed’ (l.3.)
pYA:{pyaa:} ‘bee’ (l.4.)
TA:{thaa:} ‘put’ (l.8.)
Rp`c¸mHA:{prac’mhaa:} ‘wrong’ (l.10.)
kA:{kaa:} ‘CONTRASTIVE’ (l.12.)
Regrettably, {-:} in spellings of open rhymes other than /a/ has not
fully regularized yet.
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