สำนักงานราชบัณฑิตยสภา

ค� ำถามเกี่ ยวกั บทั ณฑมาต 32 The Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand Vol. 40 No. 2 Apr-June 2015 Abstract Questions on Thanthakh â at Navavan Bandhumedha Fellow, Academy of Arts, The Royal Society of Thailand. This paper aims to studay the usage of a cancellation mark called thanthakh â at and answer some questions. A controversial question is whether or not the thanthakh â at could be placed above the final consonant of the firsr component of sam àas words indicating that the sound of that consonant is not released. The answer is that the rule forbidding such use of the thanthakh â at might have been set up about 2461 B.E. Before that time, the thanthakhâat had been used against this rule in many sam àas words. Besides the controversial question, there are other questions on the thanthakhâat answered in the paper, i.e., why some people call the thanthakh â at kaaran, from where the thanthakhâat originated, whether the use of a thanthakhâat above a word’s nonfinal letter was popular or not, and whether the mark once placed over the final consonant of a Pali and Sanskrit words was called thanthakhâat or wanchakaan. Keywords: thanthakhâat, kaaran, wanchakaan.