[INDOLOGY] Visuddhimagga

Thu Nov 13 15:48:51 UTC 2014

No, I didn't know that one.  Thanks, Herman!
Dominik

On 13 November 2014 16:21, Herman Tull <hermantull at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dominik,
>
> You are likely aware of Lanman's essay, India and the West with a Plea for
> Team Work among Scholars (JAOS 40 [1920], and can be assessed here,
> https://archive.org/details/jstor-593425). I don't recall any discussion
> of the Visuddhimagga (I've not read it in a long time), but it does add to
> our understanding of Lanman's views.
>
> regrads,
>
> Herman
>
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 6:12 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> There's a new wrinkle on the editing history of the Visuddhimagga, not
>> mentioned in Steve Collins' article, but kindly brought to my attention by
>> Christophe Vielle (thanks!).
>>
>> Dharmanand Damodar Kosambi (not to be confused with his son Damodar
>> Dharmanand Kosambi) worked on Warren's edition of the Visuddhimagga.
>> Dharmanand's work was finished in 1911, but the book took until 1950 to
>> appear.
>>
>> Meanwhile, Dharmanand went back to India, and in 1940 he published in
>> Bombay an edition of the Visuddhimagga
>> <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55562616> in his own name, work that he
>> had begun in 1909. It was based on the same manuscripts as Warren's work,
>> plus reference to two printed editions from SE Asia, perhaps the same as
>> those used by Caroline Rhys Davids.  Dharmanand said, in his Preface,
>> The sources used for the present edition are primarily the same as those
>> employed for the Harvard edition, consisting of four excellent manuscripts:
>> two Burmese, two Singhalese.  In addition, I have used one printed edition
>> in Burmese and one in Siamese Characters ; while generally not so good as
>> the first of the Burmese manuscripts, these contain an occasional superior
>> reading. To reduce the bulk of this volume, I have omitted all variants ;
>> the best alternative readings, however, will be given with my own
>> commentary-in the volume to follow.
>> Dharmanand's Visuddhimagga edition has been transcribed and published as
>> a web document
>> <http://dharmanandkosambi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=126&Itemid=144>
>> .
>>
>> So there are *three* editions of the Visuddhimagga published between
>> 1920 and 1950, with entangled editorial histories:
>>
>>    1. Caroline Rhys Davids, 1920, based on 4 printed editions
>>    2. Dharmanand Kosambi, 1940, based on 4 MSS and 2 editions
>>    3. Henry Clark Warren, 1950, based on 4 MSS
>>    Warren died in 1899, leaving his edition almost complete.  Kosambi
>>    was invited by Lanman to bring it to a publishable state, which he and
>>    Lanman did together, completing that between 1910 and 1911. Nothing then
>>    happened for fifteen years.  Then Lanman and Kosambi settled some dispute,
>>    and Kosambi saw the work through the press in 1926-1927.  But the work
>>    remained unpublished until 1950 [Preface
>>    <http://dharmanandkosambi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=160&Itemid=266>
>>    ].
>>
>> Warren's actual editorial work on the text preceded that of both the
>> others.  But it was only published after their editions.
>>
>> For his 1940 edition, begun in 1909, Kosambi used the same MSS as Warren
>> had used 40 years earlier.  Two of these MSS were personally procured by
>> Warren from England, by correspondence with Thomas Rhys Davids and with Dr
>> Richard Morris [as Lanman says <http://www.jstor.org/stable/592341?seq=4>],
>> and a third was personally lent by Henry Rigg.  Did Kosambi really,
>> separately, gain access to the very same privately-owned MSS?  Or were they
>> still in Cambridge MA when he worked  there after Warren's death?  Or did
>> Kosambi use Warren's unpublished text in constituting his own edition.  It
>> is hard to imagine that he would not do so, since the work was done and lay
>> there before him.
>>
>> I should mention that for all these editors it was a matter of importance
>> that their editions were produced in this or that script.  Caroline Rhys
>> Davids' edition was mainly undertaken in order to produce a Roman-alphabet
>> version of the pre-existing Burmese- and Ceylonese-script editions.  She
>> showed little engagement with actual text-critical tasks.  Warren was
>> engaged with both text-criticism and with the idea of transliteration.
>> Warren's edition prints MS readings.  Kosambi also cared about script,
>> producing his edition in Devanagari, thus intending specifically to reach a
>> readership in India.  Kosambi also engaged in text-critical tasks to the
>> extent that he applied Paninian grammatical thinking to the construal of
>> the text, especially in matters of sandhi.  But Kosambi omitted to print
>> any variants from the manuscripts, which means that his edition cannot be
>> used as a critical edition, since he denies the reader the opportunity to
>> think critically about his editorial choices and their alternatives.
>>
>> Best,
>> Dominik
>>
>> --
>> The secondary literature
>> <http://books.google.at/books?id=q1XoNhUrP1MC&lpg=PA180&dq=dharmanand%20kosambi%20visuddhimagga&pg=PA180#v=onepage&q=dharmanand%20kosambi%20visuddhimagga&f=false>
>> contains references to an edition of the Visuddhimagga by Dharmanand
>> Kosambi (and not Warren) published by OUP in London in 1950.  I think this
>> is probably just an error.
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
>
> *Herman TullPrinceton, NJ *
>

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