[palistudy] Re: Creating a Pali Tipitaka and Pali Literature Wiki-space

Hi Eisel,

On Tuesday I was at the installation ceremony of the new Thai Mahaasangiiti Tipi.taka edition in 40 volumes at Uppsala library. It was a moving and impressive event. I haven't had time to peruse the volumes yet, but the organisers passed out some printed materials with extracts. Here's how the edition romanizes a pali verse (using diacritics instead of velthuis, of course):

Baahusaccañca  sippañca
Vinayo ca susikkhito;
Subhaasitaa ca yaa vaacaa,
Eta.m ma^ngalamuttama.m.

You'll notice that it does not separate word-boundaries where an indian alphabet would write the words together or convert nasals to anusvaras. Accordingly there won't be a need for apostrophes marking ellision either. So right there you've got a romanization scheme that avoids doing violence to euphony, metre, pronounciation, overall appearance etc. The only remaining objection is that roman characters need some digraphs, such as kh and bh, and I don't really see this as a serious hindrance. We are already accustomed to digraphs in English such as the th in 'this' or the ph in 'phonograph'. Anyone who reads pali in roman characters comes to see bh in bhavati as representing a single sound very rapidly.

When it comes to going directly to manuscripts or regionally produced editions, I really don't see how this would be an improvement. You must have noticed yourself that the manuscripts are far from consistent as to orthography and readings, and that they contain clerical errors. It's also common in Sri Lankan editions that elements of compounds are separated when they should be written together (sometimes, I believe, to adjust the line length to fit in the allotted space).

So I still believe the idea of comparing mss to create editions is a valid one. Your idea of making mss available on DVD-roms is, of course, a wonderful idea, but it would be an additional tool on top of normal editions. Reducing everyone to the status of a pioneering manuscript researcher would set pali studies back 120 years, not advance it.

Ultimately one could raise the same objection you raise against printed editions against the manuscripts you claim are superior. Aren't manuscripts a desecration of the buddhavacana, which should only be preserved through oral recitation? 2000 years ago you could very well have encountered this sort of argument, which seems to recur whenever a new media arises. Even now, the e-version of the Mahaasangiiti text is being delayed, and I suspect one of the reasons is this sort of suspicion about new media somehow 'cheapening' the text. So your idea of using the latest technology, computers, together with manuscripts seems a bit odd as it jumps over the level of the printed book. And yet it still doesn't really go back to the orally recited source. To be truly consistent shouldn't you be demanding that CDs be released with chanted texts and that no-one involve written alphabets in their scholarly work at all?


> how do you come up with a program that can interpret and
>correctly remove the apostrophe in PTS-style Pali?

It's very simple, I believe. The program,

1) deletes the apostrophe
2) deletes any intervening space between the apostrophe and the immediately preceding or following word.

For example: PTS gacchaam' aha.m >  gacchaamaha.m

But in any case, you don't have to start with a romanized text using those conventions with which you disagree. They can be avoided altogether as in the above quoted edition, or they can be included (invisibly) so that the user of an e-text can choose to turn them on or off at will.

Thanks for the postcard, by the way. It's hanging on our fridge.

best regards,

/Rett