Re: Creating a Pali Tipitaka and Pali Literature Wiki-space

Hi Rett,

> On Tuesday I was at the installation ceremony of the new Thai Mahaasangiiti Tipi.taka edition in 40 volumes at Uppsala library. ... Here's how the edition romanizes a pali verse ...

Pardon my ignorance, but I take it this edition is a Romanized version of
the Thai "9th council" tipitaka?  I haven't seen a Romanized version of it
in Thailand --but, then, why would I?

> 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 ...

Agreed --this would seem to be a maked improvement over previous standards.

> 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.

I agree that it is a problem with many available solutions (even Ben
Franklin managed to set up a press with ligatures/digraphs for "th" and
other such combinations) --but it is curious that no edition known to me has
put forth such a solution.  In reading a recent Unicode proposal for the
Lao-Dhamma script, I noticed a french author using superscript "h" for "bh",
"ch", etc., to distinguish it from actual combinations of the (separate)
letter h.  Ugly, but it works.  If you take a glance at the huge range of
Phonetic symbols already comprised in Unicode, various possible solutions
within Romanization will probably present themselves to your imagnation.

> 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.

Of course; the MS is not about to replace the printed edition.  My point is
the opposite: let us not neglect MS, or allow them to be replaced by the
printed edition.  Digitization of MS can be a reciprocal part of
preservation --and the patronage of continuing the discipline of creating
new MS by hand.

>Reducing everyone to the status of a pioneering manuscript researcher would set pali studies back 120 years, not advance it.

However, reducing myself to the status of pioneering manuscript researcher,
I advance myself.  Paradoxical, hm?

E.M.


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