[INDOLOGY] Descriptive sanskrit manuscript catalogues best practices

Sun Jul 28 09:24:59 UTC 2024

Hi!

I think that, as a standard for cataloguing considering this well-spotted
by Dominik difference between "work" and "manuscript", one can use FaBiO,
the FRBR-aligned Bibliographic Ontology (see [1]), which is based upon
Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records approach (see [2]).

This approach differentiates between four "entities":
1. *Work*, which is the intellectual or artistic creation, on an abstract,
conceptual level; this entity is referred usually as "I have read
Bhagavad-Gita!" without reference to editor, edition, physical or digital
format, etc.
2. *Expression*, which is another abstract entity, involving the
realization of an work as text or audiobook, or in another language.
3. *Manifestation*, which is the "physical embodiment of an expression of a
work" [2].
4. *Item*, which is an "exemplar of a *manifestation*" [2], a physical or
digital object.

An example from [2], about the work *Gone with the Wind*:
[image: image.png]

Best regards,
Claudius Teodorescu

[1] https://sparontologies.github.io/fabio/current/fabio.html
[2] https://loc.gov/cds/downloads/FRBR.PDF

On Sun, 28 Jul 2024 at 03:21, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dominik has as usual identified the central issue, should a manuscript
> catalogue describe "works" or "manuscripts".
>
> But a more complicated related question (and the reason I asked my
> original question) is "what should be in the catalog descriptions of
> on-line sanskrit etext collections?". Is it even possible to come up with
> a standard for this, and would it be useful?  There is SARIT, GRETIL,
> Muktabodha, Digital Corpus of Sanskrit, TITUS and others online.  So  what
> should be the standards for cataloguing these. What to put in their
> headers. This is of course complicated because some of the etexts in these
> collections are manuscripts and some are copies of published editions
> (works). Several collections including Muktabodha contain both published
> editions and manuscripts. .
>
> Should such a catalog be directed towards experts (i.e. assume they know
> the work) or should there be information useful to people who are less than
> expert (information about the work). To give a trivial example. The
> Muktabodha digital library contains the Bhagavadgītā with the commentary of
> Abhinavagupta edited by Lakshman Joo. This is the Kashmiri recension of the
> Bhagavadgita.  Should a catalog entry for this etext just say its the
> Kashmiri recension (sufficient information for knowledgeable people) or
> should a catalog entry for this etext explain in brief the differences
> between the vulgate and the Kashmiri recension (useful to students less
> than expert in the Bhagavadgita) who may have come across this in their
> internet searchs.
>
> Thanks,
> Harry Spier
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 5:20 AM Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I have always admired Chandrabhal Tripathi's catalogue of the Strasbourg
>> Jain MSS as a model.
>>
>>    - Tripāṭhī, Chandrabhāl. 1975. Catalogue of the Jaina Manuscripts at
>>    Strasbourg, Indologia Berolinensis ; Bd. 4 (Leiden: E. J. Brill)
>>
>> There's a big issue at the heart of your question.  Does a catalogue
>> describe *works* or *manuscripts*?
>>
>> Almost all catalogues of Indian MSS describe works.  That is to say,
>> there's a tacit assumption that a manuscript carries a work.  So we say "a
>> manuscript of the Bhagavadgītā".  This gets cataloguers into difficulties
>> when a manuscript supports many works.  It also leads to the suppression of
>> non-work materials such as marginalia, glosses, scribal verses and so on.
>>
>> The usage of European classicists and medievalists is more evolved, and
>> is the opposite.  All major catalogues of Western manuscripts describe
>> *manuscripts*.  A typical entry begins with the physical description and
>> then continues with a folio-by-folio description of what is written on the
>> pages.  Finally, there will be references and bibliography.  To find
>> *works* in such a catalogue, you consult an index.
>> Some examples:
>>
>>    -
>>    https://archive.org/details/medievalmanuscri0001kern/page/280/mode/1up
>>    (Neil Ker)
>>    -
>>    https://archive.org/details/catalogueofdated0001brit/page/46/mode/1up
>>    (Andrew Watson)
>>    -
>>    https://archive.org/details/westernmanuscrip0001trin/page/257/mode/1up
>>    -
>>    https://archive.org/details/b30455881_0001/page/72/mode/1up?view=theater
>>    - https://archive.org/details/descriptivecata00univ/page/176/mode/1up
>>    - https://archive.org/details/descriptivecata00univ/page/355/mode/1up
>>    (index)
>>
>> The second, manuscript-oriented, procedure has more practical and
>> intellectual advantages than I can list right now.
>>
>> After the war, the great V. Raghavan designed a spreadsheet-like scheme
>> for handlisting manuscripts and finagled funding to pay for catalogues that
>> followed that scheme.  That's all still in place today.  So we have a
>> century of Indian cataloguing based on a mistaken concept of *what it is
>> that gets catalogued*.
>>
>> I wrote a bit about this in my 2013 article, pp. 169 ff. and esp. 172
>> ff.  See attached.
>>
>> Dominik
>>
>>
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-- 
Cu stimă,
Claudius Teodorescu
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