[INDOLOGY] Including photographs of original manuscripts with on-line editions

Sun Apr 16 23:30:40 UTC 2023

Thank you Valerie,
>From the examples shared on-line and a few offline, it seems that having
photographs of the original manuscript along side a diplomatic
transcription or an edited version is not as uncommon as I had thought.
Thus addressing the problems pointed out by Dominik Wujastyk and Philip
Maas.

Harry Spier

On Sun, Apr 16, 2023 at 4:55 PM Valerie Roebuck <vjroebuck at btinternet.com>
wrote:

> H. Nakatani, *Udānavarga de Subaši*, an edition of a fragmentary
> manuscript in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, is in two volumes, the first being
> a romanised version of the surviving text with parallels of the verses from
> comparable texts, and the second a set of photographs of the fragments
> together with diagrams showing how they would all have fitted together. (An
> extreme example, of dealing with an extremely damaged text.)
>
> Valerie J Roebuck
> Manchester, UK
>
>
> On 14 Apr 2023, at 00:40, Eric Moses Gurevitch via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
> Dear Harry,
>
>
> Sorry to come to this discussion late. A recent example of what you are
> looking for – although not from the world of Sanskrit – is the edition of
> BnF Ms. Fr. 640 that the folks at the Making Knowing Project at Columbia
> University have produced. (The edition seems to accommodate both of Dominik
> Wujastyk’s suggestions and Phillip Maas’s observation that you have
> mentioned.)
>
>
> The online edition (accessible here
> <https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/folios>) provides
> high-resolution images of the original manuscript side-by-side with a
> transcription. When it comes to the transcription, readers have the option
> of choosing either (1) a diplomatic French edition, (2) a normalized French
> edition, or (3) a translated English version. The transcriptions replicate
> the complex *mise-en-page* of the original manuscript, and – if you ask
> me – it is a fairly elegant way of editing and translating this text and
> making it available to new publics.
>
>
> Take care,
> Eric
>
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 4:30 PM Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
>> Thank you to Westin Harris and Hartmut Buescher who offlist both pointed
>> me to Harunaga Isaacson and
>>
>>  Francesco Sferra's edition of the Sekanirdeśa of Maitreyanātha. To
>> Peter Pasedach who also offlist pointed
>>
>> me to Michael Hahn's edition of the Kapphiṇābhyudaya. Matthew Kapstein
>> who provided a archive.org link
>>
>>  to Nilratan Sen's facsimile edition of a caryāgitikoṣa manuscript (which
>> had the manuscript page
>>
>>  photograph and transcription on the same page). And to Heike Oberlin who
>> pointed to the on-line
>>
>>  transcription of the Bhasa projects cārudatta based on multiple
>> manuscripts (very very impressive!!)
>>
>> Why I asked the question.  Dominik Wujastyk had suggested as best
>> practice for transcribing a manuscript.
>> In transcribing a manuscript it is best practice to transcribe
>> diplomatically exactly what the MS says.
>> A second, separate file may be prepared that contains various
>> normalisations, like ba/va or śa/sa, rma/rmma, etc.
>> But Phillip Maas pointed out:
>> Determining “exactly what the MS says” may sometimes be a less
>> straightforward task than it may seem. Frequently, transcribing requires
>> interpreting
>>
>> So it seemed to me (at least for on-line transcriptions ) that the best
>> solution was to simply include a copy of the manuscript and a normalized
>> (or non-normalized) transcription of it.  My understanding is that
>> photographs of 2 dimensional objects can't be copyrighted, so the only
>> thing preventing this would be contractual obligations (such as with NGMCP
>> manuscripts).  Presumably any qualified person using the manuscript for an
>> edition would know the script the manuscript was written in (devanagari,
>> grantha, Śāradā etc.) so he/she could accept or reject any normalizations
>> etc.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Harry Spier
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 1:53 PM Heike Oberlin <
>> heike.oberlin at uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Harry,
>>>
>>> Here is another example, taken from the former Bhāsa project (Tübingen &
>>> Würzburg) – probably not the latest programming, but it has worked for
>>> years:
>>> https://www.bhasa.indologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/rahmen.html
>>> [For more information refer to my article from 2012: »From Palmleaves to
>>> a Multimedia Databank – A Note on the ›Bhāsa-Project‹«. In: *Aspects of
>>> Manuscript Culture in South India*. Ed. by Saraju Rath. Leiden: Brill
>>> 2012 (Brill’s Indological Library, 40), p. 139-155 and Plates VI-IX.]
>>>
>>> Click on „Cārudatta“; there on the blue numbers in square brackets –
>>> this links the text passage to the respective palm leaf manuscript(s): leaf
>>> number, recto/verso, line.
>>> Each work is linked to an overall word-index of the plays entered in the
>>> database.
>>>
>>> More information on programming: Matthias Ahlborn (
>>> Matthias.Ahlborn at epost.de).
>>>
>>> For the book edition (Esposito, Anna Aurelia: *Cārudatta. Ein indisches
>>> Schauspiel. Kritische Edition und Übersetzung mit einer Studie des Prakrits
>>> der 'Trivandrum-Dramen'. *Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2004) contact:
>>> anna.esposito at uni-wuerzburg.de.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Heike
>>>
>>> --------------------
>>> *Prof. Dr. Heike Oberlin*
>>> Dept. of Indology · University of Tuebingen
>>> Nauklerstr. 35 (room 3.07) · 72074 Tuebingen · Germany
>>> phone 07071 29-74005 · mobile 0176 20030066 ·
>>> heike.oberlin at uni-tuebingen.de
>>> * https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/9974 <https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/9974>*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Am 13.04.2023 um 17:55 schrieb Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY <
>>> indology at list.indology.info>:
>>>
>>> Dear Harry,
>>>
>>> Here’s one example. The are several others in Buddhist studies that also
>>> come to mind.
>>>
>>> https://archive.org/details/caryagitikosa
>>>
>>> Matthew
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 15:03, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <
>>> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear list members,
>>> Has anyone included photographs of the original manuscripts with their
>>> on-line or off-line editions of a sanskrit text, or know if someone has
>>> done this?
>>> Thanks,
>>> Harry Spier
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
>
> --
> Eric Moses Gurevitch
> National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
> Vanderbilt University
> eric.m.gurevitch at vanderbilt.edu
>
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