Module:RQ:oty:Mahadevan/documentation

This module is a data module providing a catalogue of passages from one particular book or article for each passage to demonstrate the existence of multiple Old Tamil words. The modules returns a 3-D array (technically a Lua table), indexed as follows:

1. The outer index is the figure number.
2. The second index is a character string serving as the name of the passage within the page - using the first word is the simplest scheme.
3. The third index is an element number - the text (item 1), its transliteration (item 2) (optional) and its translation (item 3).

The table has one named element, "reference", that holds the name of the template (namely, {{RQ:oty:Mahadevan}}) used to identify the source to the reader and format the quote, its transliteration and its translation.

The intention is that the word will be highlighted when selected by these three indices. Words are assigned positive numbers and their boundaries are marked up in the form {number-word}. This mark up can be nested, so that words may contain other words. Different sections may have the same number; this allows for repeated words, overlapping words, and discontiguous translations.

The words are transcluded into a page using an invocation of the form {{RQ:oty:Mahadevan quote|Pl. 65|t|3}}; this example produces the text:

c. 2^nd century AD, anonymous author, Pugalur-5, →ISBN; published in Iravatham Mahadevan, Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century C.E., Second edition, Volume 1: Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions, Chennai: Central Institute of Classical Tamil, 2014, Pl. 65^finding:

𑀦𑀮𑀺𑀬𑀊𑀭𑀆𑀧𑀺𑀝𑀷𑀓𑀼𑀶𑀼𑀫𑀫𑀓𑁵
𑀓𑀻𑀭𑀷𑀓𑁄𑀶𑀺𑀘𑁂𑀬𑀺𑀧𑀺𑀢𑀧𑀸𑁵𑀺

naliyaūraāpiṭaṉakuṟumamakaḷa
kīraṉakōṟicēyipitapāḷi

Kīran̠ Kor̠r̠i, the young daughter of Piṭṭan̠ of Nalliyūr, had this hermitage made.

There is no advantage in including a passage for the sake of one word; one can use {{RQ:oty:Mahadevan}} directly for that purpose.