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

Thu Apr 13 23:40:41 UTC 2023

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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