textual sequence

petra kieffer-Pülz kiepue at T-ONLINE.DE
Thu May 21 09:42:44 UTC 2009


Dear Stefan,

thank you for your comments, especially for those on the Niddesa,  
etc. This seems to be comparable to the chapter headings originally  
also given in the end. I think this is the solution for my passage,  
which strictly speaking is not a commentary, but the introduction to  
a commentary.

Thanks also to all others for their comments.
Petra


My description was not fully correct, because the
Am 21.05.2009 um 03:44 schrieb Stefan Baums:

> Dear Petra,
>
> in Gāndhārī commentary manuscripts (1st c. BCE to 2nd c. CE), root
> verses are identified at the beginnig of commentary sections by
> their first pāda, and prose root texts by their first few
> words. This is then followed by the body of the commentary with
> pratīkas (usually without iti and often without any indication of
> their root status) interspersed. The root text is nowhere quoted
> in full, neither before nor after the commentary, which probably
> means that readers were supposed to know it by heart and just
> needed their memory jogged.
>
> Over on the Pali side, I think that if you look at the Niddesa,
> the original order is for a full quotation of a root verse to
> follow the commentary as you describe. Each of the commentary
> sections is introduced by a quotation of the first pāda of the
> verse in question, just like in the Gāndhārī manuscripts. Now
> modern editions of the Niddesa (and recent manuscripts?) _also_
> print the root verse before its commentary section, but such a
> double full quotation seems rather clearly secondary, and it is
> the full quotation after the commentary body that is syntactically
> linked to the preceding (by the phrase “tenāha bhagavā ... ”),  
> so
> that is presumably the more original one of the two. One could
> further compare the Udāna and similar texts, where the root verse
> likewise follows the explanatory prose, introduced by a linking
> phrase “atha kho bhagavā ... imaṃ udānaṃ udānesi ... .”
>
> All best wishes,
> Stefan
>
> -- 
> Stefan Baums
> Asian Languages and Literature
> University of Washington

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Dr. Petra Kieffer-Pülz
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Tel. 03643/770447
kiepue at t-online.de





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