Retrograde, Mirrored, Inverted Etc. Etc.

No one ever told me that writing a book in a foreign language would be easy - I am learning it the hard way how fraught with pitfalls it can prove to be. But where I am concerned, writing a book in my own language would have been even more testing - because I cannot write a crummy line in Zhoogkha/Dzongkha 😂

In an attempt to hasten the process of completing my coin book which has been in the works for the past over a decade, I revisited my coin labels - all neatly typed out with descriptions, weights and measurements. I had believed that I was past that tiresome exercise. But one can never be too careful … some careless mistakes could always creep in.

I felt an instinctive uneasiness when I reached the pages where the variety of Sa Maartangs were described and labeled. I stopped to take a harder look at the series of following coin labels:

Retrograde Sa? Inverted NDra? Am I sure I got them right?

I have been vexed by my doubt about the exact meaning of the words, particularly in reference to projected images: Inverted, Mirrored, Retrograde etc. etc. I decided to get a proper understanding of the meaning of the words. I went into a deep delve - including asking uncle Google. I discovered as follows:

RETROGRADE

          When a planetary object is in motion - on a backward direction.

MIRRORED

          An image as seen when reflected back from a mirror.

INVERTED

          When an image is upside down - when the top is at the bottom and the bottom is on top.

I realized that I had gotten it all wrong. The NDra was NOT inverted - it was mirrored. So was the alphabet Sa - it was NOT in retrograde. Thus, now I have the stupendous task of rewriting a large portion of the coin labels - change all the “Inverted” and “Retrograde” to “Mirrored”.

Oh man, SO BORING!!!

Explanation: It is clear that some of the artisans who engraved the coin dies did not know that the dies have to be engraved with the mirrored images of the designs they want reproduced on the coins. Thus, some of our hammered coins ended up being depicted as mirrored images - like thus:

Flawed work of inexperienced engravers!