COMMERCIAL EDS. + CRIT. EDS.

[rwl at uts.cc.utexas.edu]

        Prof. Lorenzen's posting has many important points that must be
kept in mind when dealing with the complex textual traditions of India.
However his posting also reveals a view of "critical editions" that is both
common and the source of much confusion.  I refer to the notion that a
"critical edition" claims to be THE text.  In fact, the value of a critical
edition is that it collects in one place the most complete evidence about
the transmission of a text that the print media can provide.  In addition,
we get the opinion of the editor about what the oldest version of a text
may have been.  Editors always make mistakes.  While we should, I think, be
grateful to editors for their willingness to share their judgements with
us, we should never accept those judgements blindly.  Rather we must always
weigh those judgements in light of the testimonia preserved in the
unpleasant and hard-to-read variants at the bottom of the page.  These
variants are the real service to scholarship that critical editions
preserve for us.  Admittedly, for the lazy who do not use these variants or
for those scholars whose lingusitic skills do not enable them to use those
variants the judgement of an editor can be misleading.  But that is not the
fault of the editor or of the edition.

        Prof. Lorenzen's points about oral traditions are well taken.
However, while we would be foolish to think that a "critically edited"
version of Kabir is THE Kabir because of the constantly evolving nature of
this corpus, we would be equally foolish to think that the Mahabharata
printed in bold face above the variants is THE Mahabharata.  A critical
edition always strives to reconstruct the autograph version of the author,
but such a thing is seldom possible (especially in India).  There may not
have been AN author.  AN author may have composed numerous quite different
versions.  Regardless of the origin of a text, its audience may have done
any number of creative things with that text over the centuries.  The
purpose of a critical edition is to preserve in one place the surviving
evidence so that we can learn about the history of that text.

        A text is not critically edited in order to eliminate other voices
or to stifle a tradition--rather it is to preserve both to the extent that
this can be done in print.






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Richard W. Larivere                          residence:
Ralph B. Thomas Regents Professor   3415 Cactus Wren
Department of Asian Studies              Austin, Texas 78746-6636
WCH 4.132
University of Texas                           phone 512-327-2746 or 413-3459
Austin, Texas 78712                          fax 512-329-8207 or 327-1284
USA

phone 512-475-6039
fax     512-471-4469
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