Marking a Transliteration Line in the Half-Yearly Script
At the half-yearly moderation meeting for Class 12 Pali, 48 answer scripts are on the table. Question 2 carries 3 marks: transliterate the Devanagari line सब्बे सङ्खारा अनिच्चा into Roman script. The marking scheme says only “accept correct transliteration”. Three samples are read out. Script A gives “sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā”; Script B gives “sabbe sankhara anicca”; Script C gives “sabbe saṅkhārā anicca”. A second part carries 2 marks: render धम्मचक्खुं उदपादि. One student writes “dhammacakkhumudapādi”; another writes “dhammacakkhuṃ udapādi”. The head examiner wants a consistent rule before the bundle is sealed, because two teachers have already awarded different marks to identical answers. You have to settle the marking policy and write a short note for the file.
1. Award marks to Scripts A, B and C for the first item, and justify each award by the kind of information lost or preserved.
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Treat the three scripts as three different levels of loss. A is full credit: it preserves the nasal ṅ in saṅkhārā and all three long vowels, so both the phonology and the nominative plural agreement are visible. B should get 1/3: it is readable, but “sankhara” uses dental n for ṅ and drops every vowel length; in Pali these are not decorative, since aniccā vs anicca changes agreement and saṅkhārā vs sankhara obscures the stem. C should get 2/3: it keeps saṅkhārā but writes anicca for aniccā; that is a grammatical error in agreement with the masculine plural, not a mere font choice. The policy note should say: diacritics may be simplified only where no grammatical contrast is lost; loss of vowel length or of the ṅ/ṇ distinctions is penalised according to the information destroyed.
2. Is “dhammacakkhumudapādi” acceptable for the second item? State the sandhi rule and the marking consequence.
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Accept it, but distinguish citation from sandhi. The underlying words are dhammacakkhuṃ + udapādi. Niggahīta (ṃ) before a vowel becomes m, and the words are joined: dhammacakkhumudapādi. The spaced form dhammacakkhuṃ udapādi is the citation form, not a different reading. In a 2-mark transliteration item, both should get full marks if the student is only asked to render the line. If the item also asks for the rule, the mark should go to the explanation, not to the spacing. Do not treat the joined form as a spelling mistake; treat it as evidence that the student knows sandhi. Add a note to the key: “either resolved or sandhi-joined form acceptable; rule required only where the question asks for it.”