[INDOLOGY] Visuddhimagga

[Dipak Bhattacharya]

Was not the father Dharmanand Dattatreya Kosambi?
DB

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 4:42 PM, 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    unpublished until 1950 [Preface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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