Re: Kacc 271

It is not entirely clear to me what Jim is trying to do in his transcription of Kacc 271
from the Burmese 1982 edition.  And in particular why he is concerned about how to treat
the question marks there.  It is true that there is no equivalent to a question mark in most
pre-modern Pali texts.  That makes it a little odd to ask if it is 'correct' to use double
da.n.das in place of question marks.  Since a double da.n.da is not equivalent to a question
mark, it will lose information to replace them. 
Of course some may say that the Burmese editors were 'incorrect' in using the question
mark in their text.  That is an issue best pursued with those editors.  In my view the absence
of any equivalent to a question mark in the Pali tradition is completely irrelevant to its use in
modern transcriptions.  Distinguishing questions with a special punctuation mark can be of
value in making texts readable.  If the text contains a question, why not use a question mark? 
Of course if you misunderstand the text, you may make a mistake.  It is also possible that the
text contains a sequence of words which can be interpreted as a question or not.  Then to
use a question mark is to choose one of the possible interpretations.  But no more so than to
read the text at all.  Hopefully the interpretation you choose makes sense.

George Bedell