text probably copied by a drunk official

[JanSeifert]

Hi,
I hope someone may be able to help me with this puzzling piece of text.

The text goes:
»
previous side
… villages though not large are very numerous. they are almost all
                      passed(?)
<new page>
passed(?) of temples of a spiral shape and circular structure and several
of the poongus or priests deped <sic, clothed> in yellow garments were seen loitering…
«

This was copied by a clerk after 1830 (I have no proper info on that), and - so it seems - word by word without regard to sentences or meaning. As seen in »deped«, which is obviously »clothed« (d=cl, e=o, p=th, ed. all of this are common mistakes in the text).

Could »passed« be »possessed«? Or is there some other hidden meaning I cannot fathom as English is not my mother tongue?

Thank you very much.
Jan

[KGarrad]

Looks like a transcription, probably by OCR (Optical Character Reader)?
You need to find the original text.

[manukarik]

Would be interesting to see more of the handwritten account.

I wondered if deped could be cleped but that doesn't make sense as it means called. I also wondered if it could be a strange abbreviation of draped but  the 1st E worries me. Very strange!

[Bookbox]

deped could be a misreading/miscopying of dressed, with a long + short s, which the copyist misread as a p, and then also omitted the r.

[manukarik]

deped could be a misreading/miscopying of dressed, with a long + short s, which the copyist misread as a p, and then also omitted the r.

That's very plausible!

[arthurk]

This was copied by a clerk after 1830 (I have no proper info on that), and - so it seems - word by word without regard to sentences or meaning. As seen in »deped«, which is obviously »clothed« (d=cl, e=o, p=th, ed. all of this are common mistakes in the text).

Would the copy have been made in India and/or by someone whose native tongue wasn't English? That could easily account for some of the problems with the text. The nearest English words to "deped" would be 'depend' or perhaps 'dipped' or 'deepened', none of which make sense here, but Bookbox's suggestion of 'dressed' is a good one.

Could »passed« be »possessed«? Or is there some other hidden meaning I cannot fathom as English is not my mother tongue?

My first thought on reading it (and before I read your suggestion here) was that 'possessed' would fit the context. It's a bit literary or old-fashioned now - mostly, rather than "the villages were possessed of temples" we'd just say "the villages had temples".

[KGarrad]

Perhaps the text refers to the Jyotirlinga temples?

The Jyotirlinga temples in India, are dedicated to Lord Shiva. It is believed that at these temples Lord Shiva appeared as a column of fire or the lingam of light. Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Stotra says there are 12 such Jyotirlingams in India, and that every devotee of Shiva must visit these temples. But what piques my curiosity is the progressive spiral shape around which these temples are situated.

[JanSeifert]

Thank you for the swift replies!
This is part of a longer diary of a travel from India to Ava (Burma, today Myanmar) and on via Arakan back to Calcutta. As I transliterate this kind of texts for years now, most of the mistakes I can easily recognise. In that regard I am quite sure that deped was a wrongly copied clothed (I had much worse mistakes. Also one never knows if the strange language originates from the copied text or from the interpretion by the copyist. But I am more and more sure that copying was a word by word business regardless of the text itself. I have transliterated an original diary earlier where you could recognise the impact of »tiffin and a little toddy in the evening« on the ability of the writer to produce legible and comprehensible sentences.)
Its just the small places, where my limited knowledge of English and old fashioned language make me stumble. In so far thank you for supporting »possessing«.

[JanSeifert]

Looks like a transcription, probably by OCR (Optical Character Reader)?
You need to find the original text.

The transcription is mine. And the picture is my enhanced copy of the original.