Talking Org-mode

One of the advantages of the Emacs1 editor is that there are much great extensions available2. Among them, one of the true gems is definitely Org-mode (thanks Manuel for pointer!). The developers of Org are proud that their extension actually brought many people to deal with the Emacs, and thereafter to discover its ingenuity. Emacs’ high availability and expandability through Elisp is certainly of its advantages, and it acts like a cross-OS virtual machine for applications which have been putted on this Editor as a platform.

What’s Org-mode?

Org-mode3 (stable: 7.8.03) is a Emacs major mode which basically is a ultra versatile plain text outliner for taking notes. If one likes to gain an overview of Org, the huge capabilities are confusing at first. A reason for this is that Org is pretty much open in its scope, and people are using it for different tasks, as note taker, organizer, scheduler, for to-do-lists, project management, etc. etc. But in this post, I would like to focus mainly on Org as a publishing platform. Some features of Org are capable of achieving fancy things, even if Org is seen as a mere frontend to HTML or LaTeX, and even for your blog with Org2blog (see below).

Radio tables within LaTeX

A remarkable feature of Org is the build-in table editor which provides auto-alignment-as-you-write, easy rearrangement and also spreadsheet capabilities. The table mode is setted up as a minor mode (orgtbl-mode) and therefore it could be also employed for any non-Org documents (e.g. HTML or LaTeX source files) through its create-within-comment facility (“radio tables”)4. Tables within LaTeX are a real pain to create without any helpers, and orgtbl comes pretty handy for that: in a random LaTeX document, a radio table skeleton could be inserted through M-x orgtbl-insert-radio-table (a comment.sty environment is used to wrap the source table). After that, activate the minor mode through M-x orgtbl-mode and start writing the table source within the comment environment. When it’s time, push C-c C-c within the Org table to create resp. refresh the corresponding LaTeX table – isn’t that just marvellous?5

A basic sample document would look like this:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{comment}

\begin{document}
Hello, world!

% BEGIN RECEIVE ORGTBL foo
\begin{tabular}{lllll}
Monday & Tuesday & Wednesday & Thursday & Friday \\
Rain & Rain & Rain & Rain & Rain \\
\end{tabular}
% END RECEIVE ORGTBL foo

\begin{comment}
#+ORGTBL: SEND foo orgtbl-to-latex :splice nil :skip 0
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| Rain   | Rain    | Rain      | Rain     | Rain   |
\end{comment}

\end{document}

Babel

Org-mode has several outstanding features, and among them its environment for literate programming, Babel, could be emphazised to demonstrate Org-mode’s incredible functionality. Within an Org document, source code could be written directly into to literal environments or even hot-included from external files into code blocks. From these it could be included to and excluded from into the same document to do really fancy things like to hot-create diagrams for example (this is comparable to what Aditya Mahajan achieves with his Filter module for ConTeXt). Any code could be executed interactively or on-publish-time, it could be tangled (extracted) in a structured way into individual source code files and woven (exported) into the exported document in the same process. A feature likes this comes pretty useful e.g. when you are writing about code for a journal article, but it all goes much further like into reproducible research papers. Thus, even as a publishing frontend Org-mode develops an enormous potential.

For a little demonstration, please check out the following setup:

  • a Python source block puts out a list of 300 random integer pairs,
  • a Gnuplot code block takes them over and puts out an graph from these,
  • both code blocks get executed when the export happens,
  • the Python source is printed out,
  • while the Gnuplot source block gets replaced by the resulting image:6

Here’s a Python script prints out a random tabular of integer pairs:

import random
out="| %s | %s |"
for x in range(0, 300):
        pair=(random.randrange(1000), random.randrange(1000))
        print out % pair

An here’s the resulting graph:

http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/wp-content/uploads/wpid-gnuplot.png

By the way, here are the preceeding lines of the Org source:7

Here's a Python script prints out a random tabular of integer pairs:

#+srcname: foo
#+begin_src python :results output raw :exports code
  import random
  out="| %s | %s |"
  for x in range(0, 300):
          pair=(random.randrange(1000), random.randrange(1000))
          print out % pair
#+end_src

An here's the resulting graph:

#+begin_src gnuplot :var data=foo :file gnuplot.png :exports results
  reset
  set terminal png size 500,375
  plot data u 1:2 notitle
#+end_src

By the way, here are the preceeding lines of the Org source:[7]

Org2blog

Furthermore, I would like to point right further to the extension Org2blog, which provides export to WordPress directly from the running Org mode. It might not be so interesting to publish your checkboxed todo-lists on your blog, but when it comes to how elegant Org handles features like sections, links, footnotes, etc. it really makes up a deluxe editing frontend for WordPress, plus, of course the features which have been discussed here so far could be forwarded directly to your blog easily with that extension.

Unfortunately, Org2blog isn’t available through the package management so far (see here), so it must be installed manually. Basically, there are three ways to do so,

  1. you could clone the repositories of Org2blog (and the needed Elisp implementation of XML-RPC) somewhere into the Emacs search path 8,
  2. you could get the ELPA extension retrieval package.el into charge 9,
  3. and finally, you could use el-get for retrieving the add-ons 10.

After Org2blog has been got and proper configured 11, you can publish from the running Org file directly with M-x org2blog/wp-post-buffer-and-publish 12. Actually, this post was created with Org-mode and Org2blog.

Footnotes:

1 The current stable release is 23.4, but Emacs 24 is just around the corner. If you can’t wait to run one of its additional features (see here), there are unofficial snapshot packages available. Many stuff I’ve came across (like the Emacs Starter Kit) is already made up for Emacs 24.

2 For working with Emacs of course the manual is essential. Within a running Emacs, press C-h t to open the build-in tutorial. The classic introduction is O’Reilly’s Learning GNU Emacs (currently 3rd edition), and there’s also a title in Sam’s Teach Yourself series, a complete Howto from the Linux guys, and a tutorial at IBM Developer Works. Very brief I’ve found is the tutorial at the University of Chicago Library, and very useful also is the PocketReference. PeepCode features a great screencast on Emacs, which gives a great overview even over the advanced stuff.

3 Among the Org documentation there is a compact guide next to the much more detailed manual. Very useful also the the Refcard. There are several introductions, tutorials and screencasts available (see here), among them the talk of Carsten Dominik at Google Tech Talks provides a great overview of the different functions of Org. A fine German article could be found in Das freie Magazin 10 of 2009 (p. 18 sq.), and another very easy written English article could be found in the Linux Journal of 2007. Everything within Emacs is documented out, so you just have to M-x org-info to reach the build-in documentation. By the way, current Pandoc features Org as output format.

4 There’s a nice tutorial on Org tables, and a demonstration in Dominik’s talk at Google Tech Talks (00:29:00 sq.), The radio table feature is demonstrated in this screencast here for an HTML document.

5 The table source can be placed anywhere in the same document, and this feature has some further options like splicing if you have your own table headers (see here). By the way, the same is also possible for lists.

6 Gnuplot must be added to the default support for Elisp by altering the variable org-babel-load-languages in your .emacs file, please see this page here (the package of Gnuplot as well as gnuplot-mode must be installed). Org’s support for Gnuplot is well documented, see here. By the way, the Org feature Org-Plot is capable of running Gnuplot on any tabular data with a single preceding #+PLOT: line.

7 Please remark that I’ve hot-re-included the same document, just giving a line range. I’ve got that idea from this blogposting here.

8 First, save xml-rpc.el into ~/.emacs.d/, or better /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/. After that, clone the Git repository of Org2blog with git clone http://github.com/punchagan/org2blog.git into the same folder (to expand also the subdir, copy also /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/subdirs.el here). Then, both extensions must be activated by putting (require 'xml-rpc) and (require 'org2blog-autoloads) into ~/.emacs/ . When there isn’t any error message when Emacs starts up it all runs properly. But much more convenient is of course to get them via el-get.

9 Of course it’s more convenient to retrieve Elisp extensions through a build-in management. Actually, the add-on manager package.el, which queries the Emacs Lisp Package Archive (ELPA) and other repositories is going to be included into Emacs 24. On the ELPA package management, see this blog posting here.

10 el-get is capable to recognize individual code repositories. It is available as a package for current Ubuntu, but the current stable (3.1) brings some new features like list-packages (see here) – so the best idea would be to git clone https://github.com/dimitri/el-get into /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/ instead. After that, (require 'el-get) and (el-get 'sync) (for automatic inits) must be added to ~/.emacs/. Retrieval information (“recipes”) for both extensions, xml-rpc-el as well as org2blog, are already included, so all you have to do within Emacs is to do M-x el-get-install for each package to retrieve it (BTW, they go into ~/.emacs.d/el-get/) – that’s the way we like it!

11 The contact information about your blog(s) have to be given to the variable org2blog/wp-blog-alist with at least url and username, and a good place would be also to store that into ~/.emacs/. The outline of this variable could be checked through C-h v org2blog/wp-blog-alist. For an example configuration, please check out the Org2blog README.

12 On the side of WordPress, Remote publishing: XML-RPC in wp-admin/options-writing.php must be checkboxed. There are meta tags like #+TITLE: and #+CATEGORY: available for your postings, please see the Org2blog README.

 

A 5$ tour on Markdown and reST

The legacy of the lightweight markup languages is on: Markdown and reStructuredText (reST) documents (I’ve written on both markups before) are highly fit for multi target publishing, the markup is pretty intuitive and extremely easy to read, high class documents (not only for software documentation) could be created with minimal effort, while having all the advantages of simple, source code like, most portable plain text files (applying revision control, using patches for corrections and suggestions, using programming tools like grep and sed, etc.), like with LaTeX. The Emacs Wiki claims about reST: perhaps the smartest smart ASCII yet devised.

Markdown: Basic lightweight-ing with Pandoc

Markdown originated as Perl tool for the convenient writing of HTML pages. If you would like to employ that plain text formatting syntax [1] for you own e-documenting toolchain you are going to come across the excellent markup converter Pandoc [2] (thanks Edgard for pointer!). Next to reST and other markups, Pandoc accepts Markdown and puts out several formats like HTML, LaTeX, Open Document Format (.odt), and EPUB. The wrapper markdown2pdf which is shipped with Pandoc creates PDFs right from the Markdown source with LaTeX, and a processed pandoctest.md results in this PDF here [3]. With Pandoc, another decent way to get a proper typesetted output is of course to save the Open Document Format and to employ e.g. LibreOffice to typeset a PDF out of it (through its PDF export function), like this one here. Please note that the original Markdown syntax lacks things like tables and footnotes, but Pandoc employs an own set of extensions [4].

[1] A complete syntax sheet of the core Markdown (for the extensions sets see [4]) is available on the project page. On the console, there is a manpage pandoc_markdown.

[2] In Tugboat 32,11, there is an article on Markdown with Pandoc by Axel Kielhorn). In Linux User 12 of 2010, there is a German article of Pandoc. On PhilTeX there is a nice post on using Markdown/Pandoc instead of LaTeX.

[3] Alternatively, foo.pdf could be given as output file. Next to pdfTeX, XeTeX could be chosen as LaTeX engine (through the –xetex switch). By the way, pandoc -f markdown -t latex -o pandoctext.tex pandoctest.md puts out only the raw LaTeX body, for a full fledged document the switch -s (standalone) must be given. pandoc -D latex spits out the full LaTeX template (the templates are developed independently, see here).

[4] There are several Markdown expansion sets around – if you would need some of them that certainly has its influence on your tool chain. Pandoc itself employs some Markdown extensions (see the Pandoc extensions), which could be suppressed with the option –strict. Another set of extensions was invented for Multimarkdown (note: the converter itself isn’t yet available for Debian, see here, but the MMD extensions are available through the Perl module Text::Multimarkdown, see here).

reST: Generating classy booklets with Sphinx

reStructuredText [5] originated in Python source code documentation, and so the Docutils suite comes with several self standing markup conversion tools like rst2html, rst2latex, etc. Pandoc – like said – is also capable of working with reST markup. But especially the Python documentation system Sphinx is highly capable of creating high-end electronic documents from reST source [6]. After the Sphinx package has been installed, switch into a random folder and to sphinx-quickstart to create a full Sphinx environment (you can accept the suggested default values throughout, but of course the title and author, and also a revision number have to be given). After that, some files and folders appeared. The file conf.py contains the Options for LaTeX output, which could be modified here. To create a nice booklet from an example.rst (which has been converted from Markdown to reST with Pandoc), that file must be added to index.rst below toctree, and after that a make latexpdf builds a PDF out of it in _build/latex – of course the basic LaTeX packages are needed for that. Sphinx is highly expandable through extensions which makes a pretty versatile document preparation system also beyond Python source documentation.

[5] See the Docutils primer, and the also the more exhaustive specification. Also the Sphinx documentation of course includes a reST primer.

[6] On e-documenting with Sphinx, see sampledoc tutorial from the Matplotlib guys, the article of Sphinx on IBM developer works, and (most sophisticated on documenting Python stuff) Doug Hellmann’s marvelous blog post.

reST: Lightweight markup for ultra productive presentations

Another way to get a PDF from reST source is the converter rst2pdf, which makes use of the ReportLab PDF library for Python [7]. That makes up a lean, very effective e-document solution because it totally saves from running even a basic LaTeX distribution in the background to render the PDFs. Lately I came across a very nice blog post on creating presentations with reST and rst2pdf in an ultra effective manner which is very useful and which certainly beats Beamer and the others in terms of effectiveness – if you can spare things like breaks in lists and you just need simple and robust presentations slides on PDF bases very quickly it looks like there isn’t nothing better [8]. A crucial feature of rst2pdf for this purpose is the use of custom templates resp. themes. For everything, please check out Alexis’ example and the rst2pdf manual.

[7] I’ve written on ReportLab before, see here. Rst2pdf have be announced lately to get proper further developed in the future, see here, which is all right because it’s a very fine piece of software! By the way, rst2pdf could be also employed as engine for Sphinx.

[8] As a matter of fact, Pandoc supports S5 and other browser based slide show formats. Sniffing around for reST stuff I came across the presentation framework Bruce, which makes use of reST and which renders directly to the display, but unfortunately the project looks pretty dead (the pip download fails, latest uploads was and the given copyrights expired 2009, etc.). By the way, another very fine piece of Python based software for presentations is Impressive, the “Chuck Norris of presentation software” – a luxurier for PDF based slides with pure sex-like high-end features (like an expiring time bar which changes its color!) really makes a king of a conference!

Lightweight-ing with the Emacs

Things like lightweight markup-ed plain text files are certainly the domain of the Emacs editor, and there are of course modes available for reST (rst.el, part of python-doctutils), as much as for editing Markdown (markdown-mode.el, part of emacs-goodies.el). These modes put some convenience into editing reST and Markdown. In a random buffer, switch to the rsST mode with M-x rst-mode, and after that, things like syntax highlighting, helpers for decorations (like underline completion), a helper for the table of contents, and many other things are available. But really helpful is Emacs when it comes to tables, which – following the paradigm of classic ASCII tables – are a real pain to write because the whole thing has to be “painted” [9]. But as a matter of fact, the Emacs table mode handles ASCII tables pretty well, like it is explained on the mode’s homepage and in the table.el tutorial on the Emacs Wiki [10].

[9] While within reST, tables are part of the specification (cf. the reST specification), but tables are extensions of Markdown (e.g. cf. Tables in the Pandoc manual).

[10] The table mode is part of a standard current Emacs, but to get it into charge you have to add the line (require ‘table) to /etc/emacs/site-start.el.

Markdown at WordPress

Markdown libraries are available for several programming languages, e.g. for Python, for C there is Sundown, for Ruby there are several ones like Redcarpet and Bluecloth, and for Lua there is a standard library and Lunamark, and finally, also the PHP implementation PHP Markdown. The PHP Markdown library is said to generally work together with WordPress, so I just test drived the latest revision of PHP Markdown Extra (which also employs an own extension set) with a test instance of WordPress 3.3.1: the library markdown.php has to be putted into wp-content/plugins, after that the Plugin Markdown Extra appears and Markdown syntax really becomes available in the HTML editing mode of your blog posts – great!

 

Indological blogs

Here’s a list of personal blogs on Indology (alphabetically ordered, constantly updated). Some of them look like being pretty dead, but anyway, to keep the whole collection [1]:

[1] Being my old blogroll. Please nobody to feel embarrassed that I’ve taken them away from the front page – I am turning into a somewhat different direction here, next. Please leave your comments and additions! Everybody a happy and good 2012!

 

Soiné: Wortbedeutungsdisambiguierung im Kontext des Sanskrit

I’m very proud that Jonas agreed to get his very interesting Magisterarbeit published here on Granthinām, so please enjoy:

Jonas Soiné: Wortbedeutungsdisambiguierung im Kontext des Sanskrit. Magisterarbeit. Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Seminar für Indologie 2011.

 

Open source for Sanskrit philology (2): Running LaTeX

LaTeX is a professional document preparation system which holds many typesetting features which are important for philologists. LaTeX documents are first written with a text editor and everything is available through commands in form of a markup language. To produce a PDF document from the LaTeX source it then has to been compiled through a LaTeX engine like Pdftex. This approach – the separation of typesetting and output – is strange for users of common word processors which follows the approach of WYSIWYG, but has its striking advantages which might not be evident on even the second sight. LaTeX (which actually is a macro packet as extension to Donald Knuth‘s original TeX typesetter) itself features a set of basic functions which has been enormously expanded by several third party extension packets, and next to knowing the basic LaTeX commands the knowledge about which of the available packets you need is of course crucial for the successful employment of LaTeX (peer contact is very important to master the entry into the LaTeX world). Thus, like Linux, a whole TeX resp. LaTeX system consists of hundreds of files like macro packets and executables, which have been conveniently collected and coordinated in large, partly competing distributions like TeX Live or MikTeX. On many popular Linux systems, TeX Live is available as standard distribution through their standard repositories, mostly subdivided into larger individual packages. In this screencast, I am going to show how to get LaTeX into charge, again on Ubuntu Linux. We are going to succeed even beyond “Hello, world!”, and in the next part of this series we’ll proceed towards Unicode based LaTeX typesetting. To build a complete LaTeX skill set needs some endurance, but please be guaranteed that it’s really worth it – there will be several of these wonderful aha! moments when you experience that some people really knew what they’re doing.

So, here we go!

Some collected pointers

  • There are a couple of LaTeX guides and companions available on the book market (see next bullet), but already the free stuff gets you pretty far. Very popular is the (1) Not so short introduction to LaTeX 2e, and comprehensive are also the (2) LaTeX Tutorials Primer provided by the Indian TeX User Group, and (3) Peter Flynn’s Formatting information. Very useful is the (4) LaTeX cheat sheet, and the (5) LaTeX command summary. There is also the community written (6) LaTeX Wikibook, and a whole Trojan army of introductory web pages. To get a general impression of LaTeX, very compact is the article on (7) LaTeX for academics and researchers who think they don’t need it in Tugboat 28 (here) – “hey, that’s me!”, and very nice I’ve found is also the (8) MOSC 2011 presentation on LaTeX by Lim Lian Tse (here).
  • As a matter of fact, there are several heavy books on the LaTeX typesetter available in the libraries (no babe, titles like Latex intolerance – Basic science, epidemiology, and clinical management and Advanced guide for lingerie and Latex shopping do not belong to that group): there are general introductions and guides like (9) Griffiths/Higham’s Learning LaTeX, (10) Kopka/Daly’s Guide to LaTeX, (11) Kottwitz’s LaTeX Beginner’s Guide, (12) Syropoulos/Tsolomitis/Sofroniou’s Digital typography using LaTeX, and even some more titles that would fit into this category. Very rich are the titles of the LaTeX Companion series like (13) Goossens/Rahtz’s LaTeX Web Companion – Integrating TeX, HTML, and XML, and (14) Goossens/Mittelbach/Rahtz/Roegel/Voß’s LaTeX Graphics Companion. A single book you would like to take to a lost island (next of course to the usual laptop, a solar energy device … and a satellite based Internet connection) is definitely (15) Mittelbach/Goossens’s LaTeX Companion, which deals with important expansion packets (this title might overstrain beginners because it deals also with hacks on the macro language level) – for all these titles you should always check for the latest edition.
  • If you are able to regard German stuff (nobody blames you if not, does he?), there is (16) Braune/Lammarsch’s LaTeX – Basissystem, Layout, Formelsatz (in this and other titles you will find large chapters on typesettings maths because TeX is very popular in the natural sciences), very useful is the (17) FAQ provided by DANTE (here), Lingnau has collected some (18) LaTeX hacks (there also has appeared 100 neue LaTeX hacks), Richter’s (19) LaTeX Tips und Tricks is freely available, while (20) Schunk’s very useful LaTeX Praxisbuch mentions a lot of extensional packets, and there are also some older good titles in that language.
  • All the software which belongs to the TeX family is collected at the (20) Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN). The big distributions like TeX Live are usually assembling even more than just the most used stuff, so that you might not need to install things manually if you aren’t very much off the road. But CTAN is of course useful as reference or to explore the jungle of LaTeX packets, for that you can browse the directory tree directly (try looking up languages/ for example). But better for seeking needed extensions is the (21) TeX Catalogue Online, which lists all available LaTeX packets. People there have also arranged a much useful hierarchical index, where you can look up categories like Page Layout -> Landscape format.
 

Gummi 0.6 ante portas

Gummi (home, source repo) is an ambitious special LaTeX editor which has a preview pane, and next to standard up-to-date features like Syntax highlighting and Spellchecking it employs several special goodies to make the life of LaTeX users easier (like command completion, preset templates, wizards for tables and the other environments, BibTeX integration, etc.). Gummi was mainly developed by Alexander van der Mey and Wei-Ning Huang, and recently also by Dion Timmermann at the TUHH in Hamburg (by-the-way: city greetings!). It uses the GTK+ toolkit (GNOME) for its GUI features, and while it started out as being implemented in Python, in the meanwhile the developers switched over to C. Among the others, partly further developed LaTeX frontends [1], Gummi keeps up being a serious contender, and is licensed under the MIT. The last stable release was 0.5.8.

Gummi for the different Linux-es

On many popular Linux-es, pregenerated Gummi packets could be retrieved most convenient through the build-in packet management from their default binary repositories. That’s the case for Arch (see here), Fedora (see here), Gentoo (see here), and OpenSUSE (see here). By the Debian packet (In Debian Testing currently: 0.5.8-1, maintained by some dude named Daniel Stender – thanks to Jonathan Wiltshire for uploading!), Gummi is available for Ubuntu (0.5.8 has made it into 11.10 Oneiric) and thus of course for the very popular Ubuntu based “regular flavour” of Linux Mint, as much as for its Debian branch (Linux Mint Debian Edition – LMDE).

Gummi for Ubuntu at Launchpad

Wei-Ning provides Gummi on Canonical’s Launchpad (see here), so on Ubuntu systems the binaries could be also retrieved from there, very convenient without the need to manipulate the /etc/apt/sources.list manually and to take care about keys. On the console, just type sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gummi/gummi to add that unofficial repository to your list of repositories through a PPA shortcut. At the time of this posting, Gummi 0.5.8 were available through Launchpad even for Ubuntu Lucid (10.04), Maverick (10.10), and Natty (11.04). I’ve tested to backport Gummi on a pristine Lucid 10.4.3 LTS (long term support) through the PPA: after importing the PPA and updating the packet cache with sudo apt-get update there are two packets available, Gummi (depending on TeX Live 2009 – the TeX distribution which is included in that Ubuntu revision) and Gummi-notex (the same packet without that dependency, if would you like to install another TeX distribution – be it a more up-to-date TeX Live – manually). I’ve retrieved Gummi-notex, and after installing also TeX Live 2011 everything works fine on Lucid [3] – this is a very easy way to backport Gummi on Ubuntu.

Gummi 0.6 ante portas

The next major release of Gummi, revision 0.6 is going to include some major improvements like a continuous preview mode, project management, SyncTeX [2] and Makeindex support. Currently, Gummi is on 0.6 beta (rev. 0.5.999) and the developers would of course appreciate if people would like to run it already and to file bug reports if there are issues with some features still left. Please see that screenshot:

The developers feature also an unstable branch at Launchpad, which could be queried with ppa:gummi/unstable. Thus, for Ubuntu users the current Gummi 0.6 betas are available also very conveniently. As a matter of fact, the needed revisions of the libraries GTK and GLIB (both >= 2.2) are available already on Oneiric, so there isn’t any problem test driving the latest Gummi on that Linux distribution [4].

Of course the latest Gummi could be also compiled from the source. For that, the latest revision must be pulled from the source repository through Subversion: svn co http://svn.midnightcoding.org/gummi/trunk gummi. After that, the libraries needed for building must be installed manually: sudo apt-get install intltool libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtksourceview2.0-dev libgtkspell-dev libpoppler-glib-dev zlib1g-dev (I am of course referring to systems based on the apt packet manager. Please check for proper GLIB and GTK revisions). Now, cd to gummi and let the usual triad of ./configure, make and sudo make install follow there. The compiled binary is going to be installed into /usr/local/bin then and ready to get fired up by just typing gummi. That’s it this way.

Currently we are working to get the Gummi beta into Debian Experimental, which would allow a backporting of the prebuilded binaries into apt based Linux distributions. I am also going to upload the build packet into Debian Mentors, which would put some more convenience into compiling the source. I’ll add some notes as soon as this task is completed. Of course, as soon as 0.6 is ready and is published, we are going to put it into Debian Unstable then, so that it will slide through Testing into the Debian based systems like Ubuntu, Mint, and the others then again (this process usually takes a couple of weeks or even a few months if you are not running a cutting edge/rolling release system).

Notes

[1] Next to the several LaTeX extensions resp. plugins for the popular text editors that’s mainly (1) the quasi self-standing text processor, the popular LaTeX hooker LyX (much on that could be found on Manuel’s Blog, cf. here and here), (2) TeXworks, which is developed by the XeTeX father Jonathan Kew, and (3) Texmaker. A great overview has been written by Tim Schürmann for the German Linux User (05/2011, pp. 26-32), and I am going to post an English overview of the LaTeX frontends here on the blog, soon.

[2] SyncTeX provides that you could jump back to the corresponding passage in the LaTeX source if you click somewhere in the generated PDF output. Cf. the entry inverse search at Wikipedia here, and the article from Tugboat 29,3 (2008) here.

[3] We are turning over to move the dependencies towards all the different parts of TeX Live from depends to recommends generally, like Wei-Ning began that with the gummi-notex flavour. That gives more freedom with manually installed TeX distributions, see here. 0.5.8 fails to start if the pdflatex engine couldn’t be found, but this was fixed for 0.6.

[4] apt-cache show gummi actually brings up two packets then, 0.5.8-1 from the offical repository, and (currently) 0.5.999~svn1032-1 from Launchpad. So, do sudo apt-get install gummi=0.5.999~svn1032-1 (or whatever is going to be the unstable release when you’re quering).

 

Steiner/Brückner: Indisches Theater – Text, Theorie, Praxis

Karin Steiner, Heidrun Brückner (eds.): Indisches Theater – Text, Theorie, Praxis. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2010 (Drama und Theater in Südasien 8). ISBN 978-3-447-06186-5

In this publication, Heidrun Brückner and Karin Steiner in Würzburg have collected a number of articles, and while most of the contributions are papers which have been presented in the panel Drama und Theater in Indien of the 29th German Congress of Oriental Studies (Deutscher Orientalistentag) 2004 in Halle, articles by Brückner, Leclère and Roland Steiner have also been included in this volume. The articles by Leclère and Tieken are written in English and the others are in German. The book has appeared as number eight in the series Drama und Theater in Südasien edited by Prof. Brückner, and presents a broad spectrum of contemporary research on the texts and performance of the traditional Indian theatre.

In the first article Angelika Malinar (Zurich) deals with the sāttvikāḥ, a group of eight psychophysical reactions of the human body like paralysis (stambha) or sweating (sveda), which have to be in a skilled actor’s repertoire and which are collected together with the constant (sthāyī) and alternating (vyabhicāri) ones to make up a total of 49 bhāvāḥ in the sixth chapter of Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra. Malinar rejects the general interpretation of these acting elements as spontaneous expressions of emotion which are generally deprived from conscious control, which goes back to H.H. Wilson [1]. She first raises the nature of the bhāvāḥ as they – being mostly inadequately translated as “emotions” or “moods” – are able to assume either the role of vibhāva (dramatic situation) or anubhāva (acting device). A sāttvikābhāva like lacrimation (aśrupralaya) for example, is able to express the emotions of a specific dramatic situation, but is also capable of representing smoke. Consequently, it is not justifiable to explain these elements of acting as evoked by the actor through the total internalization of his role, depending on the need, they are also used in dramatic situations which would have a different emotional content. The sattva which determines the group of psychophysical reactions is said in the text to be the product of concentration (samādhi) of the imagination (manas), and Malinar – also taking into consideration the preserved relevant passages of Abhinavagupta’s Bhāratī – comes to the conclusion that in the Nāṭyaśāstra the term sattva refers to the sensitive apparatus of the body which is to be manipulated by the actor through individual imagination in a highly skilled manner.

[1] In the introduction of the Select Specimen (the full reference of the original publication is: Select Speciment of the Theatre of the Hindus. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Asiatic Press 1827): „The Sátwika Bhávas are the involtunary expressions of emotion, natural to a living being“ (p. 46).

Basil Leclère (Lyon) deals with medieval Sanskrit plays from Gujarat and Rajasthan in the period between the 11th and 13th century, such as those by Rāmancandra and Yaśaścandra, and using a very rich compilation of textual evidence for them actually having being staged, the author rejects the virulent notion that after the climax of the Sanskrit theater in the first century AD those plays remained pieces merely for reading or recitation. From the prologues and stage directions in the texts, but also from relevant chronicles like the Prabandhacintāmaṇi and the Prandhakośa, as well as from inscriptions, the author at first puts together passages which express the nature of the plays as being visually performed (1). In the texts there is evidence for stage performance (2), such as instructions for hand gestures and postures (2.1), and there are also references to costumes, makeup and props (2.2). But a large part of this rich contribution takes up the issue of the places of performance (3). The author claims that also in this area of South Asia, not only the premieres of plays did take place in temples (3.1), and presents three theses: “plays were not performed inside any architectural structure but in an open area like a courtyard or a field adjacent to the temple” (p. 42), “that a temporary pavilion was built for once and only once performance, and removed afterwards” (p. 44), and “that a permanent wooden or stone building (or even constructed from these two materials) was built within the temple precincts for staging plays”. In a lengthy passage, the author then follows the question of the meaning of the terms nṛtyamaṇḍapa and raṅgamaṇḍapa as they appear to designate certain halls in the architectural vocabulary of Jaina temples in the prevailing Māru-Gurjara style, and compares his results with the preserved theatre temples in Kerala. It follows a chapter of collected evidence for the staging of plays in palaces (3.2), in streets and other places of open access (3.3). Finally, he considers the occasion for performing plays (4), and from the the fact that these performances were “rituals or festivals in honor of Hindu gods or Jain holy men” (p. 54) Leclère concludes: “thus, it did not matter that Sanskrit was no longer understood by most of the human audience” (p. 59) [2].

[2] The lacking reference for „Dundas 2002“ is: Paul Dundas: The Jains. 2nd edition. London, New York: Routledge 2002 (Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices).

In the third article Hermann Tieken (Leiden) examines the bhaṇitāḥ, being songs ending with the mentioning of their supposed author, and he observes that their apparently somewhat random insertion into plays mostly elicits a jar effect. The author puts the Gorakṣavijaya from the Mithila tradition of the 14th century into the center of the inquiry, being attributed to Vidyāpati solely on the grounds of the extant bhānitāḥ. He compares collections of songs of similar nature, the Padāvalī of the same author, Jayadeva’s Gītagovinda as well as the Old Tamil Caṅkam Kalittokai. Tieken refers to previous contributions in which he showed that the Kalittokai consists of lāsyāḥ – minor dance scenes as defined by the Nāṭyaśāstra – and comes to the conclusion that the bhānitāḥ in the Gorakṣavijaya, as vernacular songs, differ from them as much as from the catuṣpādāḥ, as found for example in Kalidāsa’s Mālavikāgnimitra. Because the bhānitāḥ could not be reconciled even with the dhruvāḥ as songs which are generally not part of the text, Tieken concludes that the Gorakṣavijaya with its bhaṇitāḥ should be considered an innovation at peak of the song genre, which had subsequently affected the Newari tradition, and the development could be summarized as: “drama had become musical” (p. 74).

For the next contribution, Roland Steiner (Marburg and Halle) has collected some philological notes for the Bhavadajjuka/īya, a short comedy (prahasana) from the 6th or 7th century which is transmitted in South India and which is next to the Mattavilāsa of Mahendravarman the oldest representative of this genre [3]. A translation of the text which has been created in Marburg appeared together with its original text in 2006 as affordable paperback, and this philologically high quality publication with its appeal to a broader audience may well be compared to the volumes of the Clay Sanskrit Library [4]. The rich and detailed notes are very useful for a comprehensive examination of the text, which could be improved compared to the previous editions, and the publisher kindly makes the article together with additional corrigenda available as an offprint on its homepage [5]. A great deal could be learned from paragraph 53, with its mentioning of guliā/gulikā as an antidote for snake bite, which is quite interesting for the history of Indian medicine, and Steiner comes to the conclusion that here it doesn’t refer to the so-called “snake stones”.

[3] Towards the ascription of this text to Mahendravikramavarman resp. Bodhāyana, cf. Roland Steiner: Untersuchungen zur Harṣadevas Nāgānanda und zum indischen Schauspiel. Swisttal-Odendorf: Indica et Tibetica Verlag 1997 (Indica et Tibetica 31), p. 255 sq. Steiner comes to the conclusion that the play most probably couldn’t be ascribed to Mahendravikramavarman, even if it isn’t possible to ascribe it to another known author.

[4] Ulrike Roesler, Jayandra und Luitgard Soni, Roland Steiner, Martin Straube: Die Heiligen-Hetäre. Bhagavadajjukam. Eine indische Yoga-Komödie. München: P. Kirchheim 2006.

[5] http://www.kirchheimverlag.de/belletristik/die%20heiligen-hetaere.htm (05/12/2011).

In the next article Katrin Binder (Würzburg) discusses the theoretical foundations of her research on the recent Yakṣagāna dance theatre tradition in Karnataka [6], in which field research and textual research complement each other. After a brief introduction and a survey of the state of research and translations, Binder deals first with the philological approach and the subject here is the so-called prasaṅga (episode). The early examples of these songs ,which are in verse, can be traced back to medieval Kanarese adaptions of the epics. However, Binder explains that it is not possible to penetrate the Yakṣagāna completely on the basis of textual research, because, for example the performances contain elements which are orally transmitted and certain parts are to be improvised. Thus she argues for a method of complementary text-based field research, “Textarbeit alleine misst dem geschriebenen Text zuviel Bedeutung bei, Feldforschung allein zu wenig [textual work alone attaches too much importance to the text, field research alone too little]” (p. 125).

[6] Dr. Binder (formerly Fischer) has written already her Magister thesis on that issue, which has been published: Yakṣagāna: eine Einführung in eine südindische Theatertradition. Mit Übersetzung und Text von „Abhimanyu Kāḷaga“. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz 2004 (Drama und Theater in Südasien 3).

The following articles deal all with the so called “Trivandrum plays”, a corpus of 13 Sanskrit plays from Kerala which have been named after the place of their first publication. They have been attributed by their discoverer Ganapati Śāstrī to “Bhāsa”, as that name is mentioned by Kālidāsa as one of his predecessors in the prologue of the Mālavikāgnimitra, which would of course give them a fairly advanced age [7]. Those plays and their performances in the still existing Kūṭiyāṭṭam (“acting together”) tradition of theatre in Kerala [8] have been the subject of research projects at the University of Würzburg funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). First, in the period from 1994 to 2000, there was a comprehensive collecting of manuscripts alongside video documentation of performances [9], and after that in another project spanning 2003-2008 a multimedia database has been created from the collected materials [10]. The employment of XML markup techniques for the creation of electronic texts of the plays has already been explained by Mathias Ahlborn (Würzburg) extensively in his dissertation on the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa [11], and in this volume he sketches the technical background of the creation of that database of the Trivandrum plays. From 2010 onwards, textual criticism, aesthetics and the performance of the plays are the subject of another DFG-funded research project in Würzburg.

[7] On that problematic issue cf. Tieken: The so-called Trivandrum plays attribute to Bhāsa. In: WZKS 37 (1993), p. 5-44, and Steiner, op.cit, p. 265 sq.

[8] Cf. Farley R. Richmond: Kūṭiyāṭṭam. In: Richmond/Swann/Zarrilli (eds.): Indian theatre – tradition of performance. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1990, p. 87-117.

[9] Cf. Brückner: Manuscripts and performance traditions of the so-called „Trivandrum-Plays“ ascribed to Bhāsa – a report on work in progress. In: BEI 17-18 (1999-2000), p. 501-550.

[10] http://www.indologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/bhasa/rahmen.html (05/12/2011).

[11] Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa. Digitalisierte Textkonstitution, Übersetzung und Annotierung. Dissertation. Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg 2007.

Anna Aurelia Esposito (Würzburg) in her contribution deals with some details of writing in the collected Malayalam manuscripts, with which she dealt extensively in her dissertation [12]. Detailed discussions of the writing of the Trivandrum plays are generally interesting for people who deal with Malayalam script for any reason, but Esposito points to the fact that not at last the discussions of the features of the Prakrit of those plays must be grounded on that textual level. She explains that apparently much of what has been highlighted as being rather peculiar by Printz in his Bhāsa’s Prākrit from 1921 must be withdrawn on palaeographical grounds, which underlines again how crucial constant manuscriptological backreference is for philology [13].

[12] Cārudatta – ein indisches Schauspiel. Kritische Edition und Übersetzung mit einer Studie des Prakrits der ‘Trivandrum-Dramen’. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2004 (Drama und Theater in Südasien 4).

[13] The lacking reference for „Murthy 1996“ is most probably: R.S. Murthy: Introduction to manuscriptology. Delhi: Sharada Publishing House 1996.

In the next article Karin Juliana Steiner deals with the Pañcarātra, which draws its theme like most of the other Trivandrum plays from the Mahābhārata, and which is mainly based on its Virāṭaparvan. The main issue under examination is the ritual which stands in the background of the story, and Steiner mainly argues against what has been brought forward by Tieken on that issue [14]. It is undisputed that although some significant vocabulary of Śrauta ritual did not appear in the text, it could be concluded from certain details that a ritual following the paradigm of the Soma ritual takes place here. Steiner disputes Tieken’s assertion that it is a Rājasūya which is portrayed, but rather a Vaiṣṇavayajña, like it suggested to Duryodhana in the Mahābhārata as a replacement for the Rājasūya he is forbidden to execute (3.241.32). To support her notion she examines the above mentioned cattle raid and the arrow episode of the play, and finally the role of the period of five nights during the ritual (p. 163 sq.), which has given the play its name. Steiner comes to the conclusion that this doesn’t refer to the kṣatrasya dhṛti ritual which is connected with the Rājasūya as suggested by Tieken, but refers to that Viṣṇuite school. The ritual allusions found in the play are all strict implementations of the epic, and Steiner argues that the thesis that the Pañcarātra together with others builds a special genre of plays associated with the Śrauta ritual – as Tieken has claimed – cannot be maintained.

[14] Three men in a row – studies in the Trivandrum plays II. In: WZKS 41 (1997), p. 17-52.

The concluding contribution of this volume is a German translation accompanying a new Sanskrit text [15] of the one-act Karṇabhāra, being the shortest of the five one-acts of the Trivandrum plays, all of which are inspired by the Mahābhārata [16]. The piece issues the bad destiny of the army commander of the Kauravas, who finally got his armor wheedled away next to his miracle ear rings on the way to his last battle, and issuing “Karṇa’s burden” the author artistically refers to widely separated parts of the epic. This really is a precious addition to the other chapters in the volume.

[15] It’s a improved version of the Sanskrit text which has been published before in the Indologica Taurinensia 28 (2004), p. 127-141.

[16] In 2010 also appeared Esposito’s Dūtavākya – die Worte des Boten. Ein Einakter aus dem „Trivandrum-Dramen“. Kritische Edition mit Anmerkungen und kommentierter Übersetzung. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2010 (Drama und Theater in Südasien).

Indisches Theater is in my opinion a rewarding lecture, and a great number of rich and profound papers on the different aspects of recent research towards traditional Indian theatre have been collected here. Seeing how much of the current research is related to the name “Würzburg” it again shows again the importance of the impulses that come from third-party funded research projects like those which could be organized there. The book certainly could be used also as a broad introduction into this interesting topic, which is able to evoke an own engagement with matters already very close to the debates now taking place. The book, which could fortunately be made available as an affordable paperback, aims as said in the introduction at a wider interdisciplinary audience, which is no doubt generally a crucial approach for the welfare of German Indology. However, more of the articles could have been in English, so that a wider international audience could also be reached.

[Thanks dude for proof reading!]

 

Open source for Sanskrit philology (1): diacritics on Linux

This is going to be a little series of screencasts on using Open source applications for Indology, resp. Sanskrit philology. Actually, Open source software holds several solutions for a whole versatile and effective tool chain for scholars. Although Linux is of course the most important platform for running all that Open source stuff, most of things going to be presented (XeTeX, Emacs, etc.) are also available for Windows and Mac (Mac’s OS – smart move! – has become a Unix hybrid system anyway). So this series might be useful also for the folks don’t thought about switching over to Linux on the PC, but maybe I can even win the one or the other to make this step. By the way, the system which is shown is Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”, which is characterized by its new tablet PC style user interface Unity, which first makes a strange impression, but which I’ve really learned to appreciate (e.g. it combines launcher and task switcher). Linux Mint became a very popular Linux beginner friendly distribution, which employs are more custom interface which might be more convenient for Windows leavers. Myself I was running the Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) for a couple of weeks, which makes a very interesting cutting edge system (it employs its software from the “Testing” release cycle), but since I’ve experienced some major problems lately with some important features (e.g. printing problems) I would strongly suggest to choose the regular flavor of Mint, which runs also the very solid Ubuntu under the hood (where never versions of software are even more careful taken in). Both distributions, Ubuntu and Mint are live systems, so they could be booted directly from the shipped CDs to test if all your hardware runs properly (usually if you don’t have any fancy or ultra new stuff, everything will work pretty much out of the box). Myself I was running Windows for years, and I can tell you dozens of reasons why Linux is the smarter choice even when you aren’t a freak (no problems with maleware and viruses at all, everything is free, the convenient packet retrieval, etc. etc.). Linux on the desktop got pretty mature in the last years (trust me: no need to hand write graphic adapter configuration scripts or to re-compile the kernel to fit your printer model anymore), and you should really give it a try! What I am going to show about using Unicode diacritics through the manipulation of the keymap with Xmodmap is a very basic manipulation, and the procedure demonstrated appeals to most of the common Linux systems.

So, here we go.

 

Preliminary survey of Sanskrit manuscripts of the Bodhicaryāvatāra

Note: preprint of a paper going to appear in the 2nd volume of the IIGRS proceedings.

The [1] Bodhicaryāvatāra (henceforth "Bca") is the "passover (avatāra, ~ introduction) into the course (caryā) of enlightment (bodhi)", which would mean "introduction into the course that leads to enlightment" [2]. The text [3] is very popular among Buddhists, was translated several times [4], and is well known and much published on by Mahāyāna scholars and teachers. In his work the Buddhist monk and Nālandā scholar Śāntideva exposes the transformation of the person leading through the stages of development of the Bodhisattva according to the teachings and from an insight point of view. In the beginning the text deals with the Bodhicitta, the "thought of awakening", which is to be raised and then to be attended by the adept. The author then goes on thematizing the stages of the "sixfold perfections" (ṣaṭpāramitā) [5] while as a climax he reveals the higher truth of the real nature of things being "empty" (śunya) in the prajñāpāramitā chapter, which makes the work clearly belonging to the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy [6]. The work is beautiful classical Sanskrit poetry, and even if it might not participate in being of a higher stage of poetical technique like other kāvyas, it is truly a sophisticated and remarkable piece of Buddhist literature. Furthermore, it is an important text for the understanding of the relation between Madhyamaka teachings and the Bodhisattva ideal, and to see what is the philosophical resp. metaphysical foundations of this figure’s behaviour.

[1] Thanks to Gérard Colas, Dragomir Dimitrov, Michael Hahn, Andrey Klebanov, Shanker Thapa, Christophe Vielle, and Peter Wyzlic for help and valueable pointers, as much as to all people who gave me precious scans of sometimes only barely available material.

[2] In Tibetan the title "Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra" (byaṅ chub sems dpa’i spyod pa la ‘jug pa – sometimes refered to as "Bsa" or "B(s)ca") appears next to "Bodhicaryāvatāra" (byaṅ chub kyi spyod pa la ‘jug pa). This has been claimed as being the original title of the poem: "Moreover it is more important, the full title of the poem is Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra (rather than the abbrivated form Bodhicaryāvatāra). This form is also supported by the Mongolian […] Obviously, our poem is not an introduction to the life of bodhi, but to the career of a bodhisattva. The source of the abbreviated title is probably the author himself" (Lindtner 1998, p. 239). But, that the longer title is to be found in the Mongolian is no argument, because it has been worked out by Weller in 1950 that it depends on the Tibetan, where it seems the longer title originates for a reason not yet been shown.

[3] In contrast its shorter, most probably earlier version, which has been survived in its paracanonical Tibetan translation and consists of 701.5 verses and 9 chapters including the pariṇāmanā, the Sanskrit "vulgate" counts 913 verses, cf. Saito 1993 and Dietz 1999 for details.

[4] On the translations, cf. Gómez 1999, p. 330 sq.

[5] In difference to for example Candrakīrti, who represents the daśapāramitā system with the Mādhyamakāvatāra. That system adds upāyakauśalya, praṇidhāna, bala and jñāna to dāna (5,9-10 in the Bca), śīlā (5,11 sq.), kṣānti (chapter 6), vīrya (chapter 7), dhyāna (chapter 8), and prajñāpāramitā (chapter 9). On the systems, cf. Eimer 2006, p. 107 sq.

[6] Cf. Seyfort Ruegg 1981, p. 82 sq., and Saito 1996.

The hitherto regarded manuscripts [7]

The vulgate of the Bca was edited several times independently and in combination with Prajñākaramati’s Bca-pañjikā:

[7] An earlier attempt to trace which manuscripts might have been regarded for the editions is Pezzali 1968, p. 50 sq. Bibliographical information on this issue has also be collected by Richard Mahoney, available as BibTeX file on his homepage.

Minaev 1889

The first edition of the mūla was created by Ivan Pavlovič Minaev (1840-90) [8] in the year 1889 for the "Memories of the Eastern Section of the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society" [9]. In the short introduction of this contribution, Minaev gives some information about three manuscripts which were available to him. Two he got borrowed from London, the first one (L¹) from the India Office:

"7713. 2927. Foll. 1-25, 28-40, 42-55; palm leaf; size 12½ in. by 1¾ in.; Nepālī ornamental (Rañjā or Lantshā) character, very clear and regular, of A.D. 1399?; five lines in a page. […] The colophon is: samāptoyaṃ bodhicaryāvatāraḥ. kṛtir ācāryaśāntidevasya maṃjughoṣaprā (sic) sādāditi. On the outer side of fol. 1 we find […] damma (sic for dharma) 9 samvat 519 mārggaśiraśuddhi. Thus the date of completition may be Mārgaśiras in Nepal saṃvat 519 = A.D. 1399, or earlier. [B.H. Hodgson]" [10]

The second one (L²) he got from the Royal Asiatic Society:

"13. Bodhicaryâvatâra. In ten parichchhedas. 47 palm leaves. 12½ in. by 1¾ in. Five lines in a page. Old. The shape of the figures and some letter is very peculiar" [11]

The third manuscript which he had for his disposal (M) was of private property [12].

[8] For biographical and bibliographical information, cf. Schneider 1934 and Bongard-Levin/Vigasin 1984, p. 82 sq.

[9] It’s a cute little bibliographical anecdote that Schneider’s arbitrary key "MOSIRAS" appears later without solution in Conze 1982, p. 95 (35:1).

[10] Keith 1935, p. 1394. The supplement by F.W. Thomas lists the 30 pieces, which have been donated by Hodgson in the years 1838-45, cf. Waterhouse 2004, p. 249.

[11] Cowell/Eggeling 1876, p. 13. This catalogue lists 79 items, which have been donated by Hodgson in the years 1835-36, cf. p. 1.

[12] This piece got into the public library of St. Petersburg after the editor’s death, cf. Mironov 1918, p. 261 sq. (no. 281). It’s a Nepalese paper manuscript consisting of 28 fols, a lacuna between fols. 3 and 6 was filled up with ones written by another hand. Minaev given the information that the text generally agrees with L². Saṃvat 721 or 821 could be found in the colophon, which would result in A.D. 1671/70 resp. 1771/70 as completition year (nepālikasaṃvat starts October 20th 879 A.D., cf. Lienhard/Manandhar 1988, p. XXVIII).

Śāstrī 1894

The second time the text was edited by Haraprasāda Śāstrī (1853-1931) [13] in 1894. Unfortunately, no information about the regarded material is given in this contribution. But fortunately, in an article on Śāntideva from 1913 Śāstrī mentions a palm leaf manuscript in the Hodgson Collection of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the context of that edition [14]. Rājendralāl Mitra’s catalogue of the Hodgson donations to the Asiatic Society from 1882 lists a palm leaf manuscript of the Bca, and so it could be supposed that this really is the piece, which Śāstrī refers to:

"Old No. 815. – New No. B. 42. […] Substance, palm-leaves, 11×12½. Folia 48. Lines on a page, 6. Extent in s’lokas 1,100. Character, Newárí. Date ? Appearance, old and smudgy. Verse. Generally correct" [15]

[13] See Law 1933 for orbituary including a bibliography.

[14] Śāstrī 1913, p. 49: "Then it was published in the Journal of the Buddhist Text Society by me. I had the advantage of collating a beautiful palm-leaf manuscript belonging to the Hodge[!]son Collection; in the Library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal."

[15] Mitra 1882, p. 47. These Hodgson donations appear again in Kāvyatīrtha 1904, p. 243 sq. (B. 42 on p. 251).

La Vallée Poussin 1898 and 1901-14

Three manuscripts of Prajñākaramati’s commentary on the Bca are recorded in the catalogue of the Government Collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the stocks of the Asiatic Society of Bengal [16]:

"49. 3830. bodhicaryyāvatāra pañjikā […] Substance, palm-leaf. Character, Newari. Date, N.S. 198=1078 A.D. In good state of preservation. With the first leaf and 26 others missing. Colophon: – bodhicaryyāvatāre prajñāpāramitāparicchedaṭīkā samāptā. kṛtiriyaṃ paṇditabhikṣuprajñākarapādānāṃ" [17]

"50. 9979. bodhicaryyāvatāra. Bodhicaryāvatāra and the Pañjikā commentary […] Four seasoned palm-leaves. 20×2. Written in old Newari Character. I. Bodhicaryāvatāra with six lines on a page, faded, containing the colophon: – bodhicaryyāvatāre dhyānapāramitā ‘ṣṭamaḥ paricchedaḥ. II. Two leaves with five lines on a page – one is marked on the left-hand side aṣa 9 = 127 – the other without leaf mark contains the colophon bodhicaryyāvaṭarapañjikāyāṃ dhyānapāramitāparicchedo ‘aṣṭamaḥ"

"51. 3829. bodhicaryyavatāraṭīkā […] Substance, palm-leaf, 12×2 inches. Folio, 109. Lines, 6 on a page. Extent in slokas, 2725. Character, Bengali of the 12th century. Appearance, fresh but worm-eaten in places. Complete. Written in a neat and small hand. Colophon: bodhicaryyāvatāre prajñāpāramitāparicchedaṭīkā samāptā. kṛtiriyaṃ paṇḍitabhikṣuprajñākaramatipādānām"

The Bca-Ṭīkā is the ninth chapter of Prajñākaramati’s commentary which appears transmitted independently, like it was edited by Louis de La Vallée Poussin (1869-1938) [18] already in 1898 [19]. Later, in the years 1901-14 the Belgian scholar edited again the whole survived commentary next to the mūla in seven volumes for the Bibliotheca Indica series [20]. However, the Bca-Pañjikā manuscripts of the Asiatic Society are in the earlier contributions refered to as being only two pieces: Śāstrī in 1895 describes again a Nepalese manuscript from 1078 A.D. ending with the ninth chapter of the commentary, this time next to another one of the ninth chapter only, written in Maithili script (cf. p. 7), The same two pieces could be found refered to as regarded manuscripts in La Vallée Poussin’s edition from 1898 (cf. p. 233), and also in the larger one from 1901-14 (cf. p. I). Actually, the records in the catalogue from 1917 are a rather problematic: no. 51 – probably acquired between 1893 and 95 – is without doubt the piece written in Old Bengali and carrying the ninth chapter of the commentary, thus a Bca-Ṭīkā, like it is given in the colophon [21]. But instead of a manuscript – being also designated as Bca-Ṭīkā in the colophon – carrying the whole of Prajñakaramati’s commentary it’s more likely that no. 49 is another instance of the singled Prajñāpāramitā, which was kept next to no. 51 carrying the Bca-Pañjikā up to chapter eight of the Bca, like it could be found in the colophon of that item. Considering the lacunae in La Vallée Poussin’s edition (3,22 – 4,45 & 8,109 – 186) it is not probable that there is another instance of that text, and so it could be supposed that what has been considered to be a single manuscript all the time carrying the whole commentary up to chapter nine, after closer examination came up to be two pieces which had to be distinguished, and this resulted in three items in the catalogue of 1917 – although not described correctly [22].

In the Bibliotheca Indica edition, La Vallée Poussin also gives the information that for the mūla he also made use of Minaev’s edition together with two manuscripts from Paris, refered to as "Devanāgari 78" and "Burnouf 98". Even if this does not match exactly, these items are presumably these two described by Filliozat in 1941 [23]:

"78. BODHICARYĀVATĀRA par Çāntideva. Marges, verso à droite: guruḥ, à gauche: bo. va. Début: namaḥ sarvabuddhabodhisatvebhyaḥ || sugatān sasutān … Colophon, fol. 56 l. 3: iti bodhicaryāvatāra pariṇāmaparicchedo daçamaḥ || çubham astu jagatḥ || samāptā bodhicaryāvatāraparikathā kṛtir iyam ācāryaçrīçāṃtidevapādānām iti || çreyo stu jagataḥ sadā || çubham astu sarvadākālaṃ || namo buddhadharmasaghāya. […] Vol. relié, 56 fol. recto blanc, verso jaune, 265×108 mm., 7 l. – Devanāgarī. Vers 1836. – Prov. Népal. Coll. Hodgson. Don Soc As. 1840 – Anc. cote: S. dév 85"

"79. BODCHICARYĀVATĀRA par Çāntideva. Fol. 1ᵃ sur papier collé: titre et nombre de fol. en devanāgarī et hindoustani. Début fol. 1ᵇ: namo ratnatrayāya. sugatān sasutān … 1 ligne ajoutée audessus: namāmi buddhān … Colophon, comme 78: … daçamaḥ samāptaḥ. ye dharmmā … bhadram astu sarvvajagatā || çubhaṃ || […] 1 vol. relié, 55 fol. recto bis, verso jaune, 260×80 mm., 7 l. – Ecriture népalie. Dernière feuille: écriture grossière. S.d. (fin du XVIIIᵉ ou début du XIXᵉ siècle). – Prov.: Népal. Coll. Hodgson-Burnouf. – Anc. cote: Burnouf 90"

[16] Śāstrī 1917, p. 49 sq. Cf. Chakravarti 1959-60, p. 664, and Kimura’s article on that collection (cf. Yuyama 1992, p. 7).

[17] It is noted in the catalogue that this pieces was still lended to La Vallée Poussin and the record had to be taken from Śāstrī 1893, where the whole transcript of fol. 213 up to the end could be found, cf. p. 246 sq. The colophon gives the information that this copy has been written in the Rāghavavihāra in Patan (lalitapure) during the reign of Śāṅkaradeva. The given date of completition has been verified as Tuesday 31st of June 1078 A.D. (cf. Petech 1984, p. 47), which is a fairly advanced age for a palm-leaf manuscript.

[18] On La Vallée Poussin, cf. Vielle 2010.

[19] Vaidya’s hypothesis that the Bca-Ṭīkā – which employs own invocation and closing verses – has been composed before as a single text (1960, p. IX: "I, therefore, feel on sure grounds that Prajñākaramati first wrote his commentary on the 9th chapter, and added the same to first eight chapters at a later date") is quite tempting, because that would provide an explanation why Prajñākaramati hasn’t commented upon the Pariṇāmanā.

[20] Cf. Sieg 1908, p. 12, and Nobel 1928, p. 5.

[21] "Bengali of the 12th century" would cover what has been designated as Maithili before, it is likely that script which Roth called "Proto-Bengali-cum-Proto-Maithili", cf. Dimitrov 2002, p. 32 sq.

[22] It’s really a pity that the colophon of no. 50 – given the fact that the 2nd lacuna extends to the end of that chapter – has probably not yet survived completely, nor we do have detailed information by La Vallée Poussin (the Bibliotheca Indica edition was planned to contain another volume with reconstructions and an exhaustive survey of the regarded material, cf. Vaidya 1960, p. VII). It really seems that we don’t even have a complete commentary on the chapters one up to number nine of the Bca in Sanskrit being called Bca-Pañjikā. Catalogues that are so good for deeper inquiries that an autopsy is unneccesary – even more needed when there are no digitial scans provided through the internet – are unfortunately rather exceptions.

[23] Cf. p. 63 sq. Both items could be found already in the earlier catalogue assembled by Cabaton in 1907, cf. p. 11. No. 78 belonged to a bunch of transcripts which were sended in 1837 to the Société asiatique by Hodgson (cf. the list from 1837, where a Bca of 56 fols. could be found on p. 296), later it got into the library already in 1840. The title Bca-parikathā appears a few times among the Bca manuscripts, cf. below, Tokyo 261 and NAK 3/257. No. 79 was originally given to Eugène Burnouf (1801-1852). Although it could be found in the auction catalogue (cf. Burnouf 1854, p. 332, no. 90), this item wasn’t sold in the auction of 1854 (cf. Yuyama 2000, p. 5 sq.), but already in 1852 to what has been the Bibliotheque Impériale (cf. Colas 1986, p. 285).

Bhattacharya and Vaidya 1960

In they year 1960 Vidhushekhara Bhattacarya edited the mūla next to its Tibetan translation again for the Bibliotheca Indica, and in the same year Paraśurām Lakṣman Vaidya (1891-1978) [24] edited again the Pañjikā together with the Bca for the Buddhist Sanskrit Text series. Although broadly used in Indo-Tibetology, the Sanskrit text of Bhattacarya’s edition is rather problematic [25], but Vaidya’s work adequately represents the survived original Sanskrit text of Śāntideva’s work as it is quite readable and complete [26]. Both editors, Bhattacharya and Vaidya couldn’t consider further material, so it is clear that these editions predominantly assemble their text from the editions which have been published before. That’s also true for the bulk of the partially recent Indian editions which are to be considered as mere reprints.

[25] Mukopadhyaya 1961, p. 287: "The late lamented Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya had barely completed his edition when death snatched him away from us. He had no time to revise it. […] In such circumstances, as in natural, some mistakes have crept in."

[26] In the first two chapters there are only two metrical defects to be found (1,2 is a Mālabhārinī with defect in b, and 1,35 seems to be completely damaged).

Summary

To characterize the whole group of regarded manuscripts, except for the palm leaf manuscripts belonging to the Government Collection of the Asiatic Societys of Bengal, the most of the manuscripts which have been edited editions are ones which have been acquired by Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801-1894) in Nepal [27]. Hodgson begun collecting manuscripts already at his first stay as Assistant Court Resident in Nepal at the beginning of the 1820s, and during his second stay in 1824-43 he carried on acquiring manuscripts and transcriptions employing the Paṇḍit Amṛtānanda and a team of scribes [28]. All of these items got to several libraries and some to private scholars in Europa and India [29]. Among the Hodgson manuscripts there are also transcripts, but among the regarded Bca manuscripts it seems that only Paris 78 is a transcript, and that the others are original ones.

[27] Nepal is a rich storehouse for Sanskrit manuscripts because: "Die speziellen klimatischen Gegebenheiten dieses Himalaya-Landes sind überdies von solcher Art, daß dort mehr alte Handschriften den Unbilden der Zeit getrotzt haben als in irgendeiner anderen Region des Subkontinentes" (Wezler 1986, p. 3).

[28] For a biographical sketch cf. Waterhouse 2004, p. 1-24.

[29] Cf. Hunter 1881 and Waterhouse 2004, p. 249 sq.

Unregarded manuscripts, original pieces [30]

[30] Compare with Tsukamato/Matsunaga/Isoda 1990, p. 255 sq.

Cambridge

A paper manuscript of the Bca mūla, written in Devanagari is kept in the University Library in Cambridge:

"Add. 869. Paper; 66 leaves, 7 lines, 10¼×4½ in.; modern, ordinary Devanāgari hand. BODHICARYĀVATĀRA. This is the ninth section of the Açokāvadāna-mālā (see MS. Add. 1482)" [31]

[31] Bendall 1883, p. 6. The manuscripts in this collection were procured by Daniel Wright, who was surgeon at the British Residency in Nepal, from 1873 to 1876, cf. p. VII. A brief listing of his donations could be found in Wright 1877, p. 316 sq., cf. also Weber 1877, p. 526 sq.

Kolkata

There is another old palm-leaf manuscript written in Bengali listed in the catalogue of the Government Collection of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, nevertheless – as far as I can tell – it couldn’t be found stated nowhere that its text has flown into the previous editions:

"19. 8067. bodhicaryyāvatāra. […] Substance, palm-leaf. 12½×1½ inches. Folia, 66. Lines, 4, 5 on a page. The 60th and the 62nd leaves are missing. Character, Bengali. Copied in Saṃvat 1492 = 1436 A.D. Appearance, old, discoloared and worn-out" [32]

[32] Śāstrī 1917, p. 21. On that piece see Dimitrov 2002, p. 36, fn. 36.

Kyōto

The Kyōto University owns two other pieces [33]:

"No. 72 (E 260) 66 leaves (last fol. numbered, wrongly, ’67′), 6 lines, 25.7×8.3 cm, ‘Saṃvat 1027′ = c. 1907 A.D."

"No. 73 (E 261) 60 leaves, 6 lines, 27.9×5.8cm […] 10 Pariccheda-s, both complete"

[33] Goshima/Noguchi 1993, p. 20. This collection was assembled by Ryōzaburō Sakaki (1872-1946) in Nepal, cf. p. I sq.

Tōkyō

The Tōkyō University Library owns five more pieces [34]:

"No. 260 (1) Bodhi-caryā-’vatāra. (2) Paper, 46 leaves, 6 lines, 13½×3 inch., Nepalese character […] The pagination of 23 is missed out. (3) (47b2) iti bodhicaryyāvatāre pariṇāmanāḥ daśamaḥ palīcchedaḥ || samāptaḥ ||"

"No. 261 (1) Bodhi-caryā-’vatāra. (2) Paper, 70 leaves, 7 lines, 10½×4¾ inch. Devanāgarī, modern […] (3) (70b6) iti bodhi-caryā’-vatāre pariṇāmanā-parichedo daśamaḥ samāpto ‘yaṃ bodhi-caryā-’vatāra-parikathā śubhaṃ bhūyāt sarva-jagatām ||"

"No. 262 (1) Bodhi-caryā-’vatāra (Two fragments of the °). (2) Palm leaf, (I) 17 leaves, (II) 43 leaves, number of lines variable, 10×2¼ inch.; (I) Siddhānta, (II) Nepalese character"

"No. 263 (1) Bodhi-caryā-’vatāra [only the beginning]. (2) Paper, 13 leaves, 6 lines, 12×2½ inch., Nepalese character […] (3) (12a1) || bodhicaryāvatare bodhicittāpramādo nāma caturthaḥ paricchedaḥ ||"

"No. 264 (1) Bodhi-caryā-’vatāra. (2) Palm-leaf, 60 leaves, 5 lines, 10¼x2 inch., Siddhānta like Kuṭila"

[34] Matsunami 1965, p. 97 sq. The chapter distribution of the pieces could be found on p. 352. This collection was gathered by the Zen monk Ekai Kawaguchi (1866-1945) together with J. Takakusu under the permission of Maharaja Chandra Shumsher, cf. Thapa 2004.

Kathmandu, NAK

The National Archives in Kathmandu (Rāṣṭriyābhilekhālaya, NAK) stores several pieces, and all of them have been made available on microfilm by the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP) [35]. There are, according to their collection ("lagat") number [36, 36a]:

acc fol reel
1/772 Palm Np 7 B 23/5
3/91 Np 33 B 98/5
3/257 Pap Np 126 B 98/8
3/297 Pap Dn 47 A 121/9
3/663 Dn 47 B 98/9
3/723 Dn 304 A 915/7
4/1033 Pap Np 54 B 97/7
5/185 Np 99 A 121/8
5/191 Dn 39 A 915/6
5/7727 Dn 129 A 134/5
5/7954 Np 46 B 97/9
6/3311 Palm Np 11 A 1389/23
6/3313 Palm Mai 19 A 1389/22

[36] Cf. Saṃkṣiptasūcīpattram and Bṛhatsūcīpattram. For lagats 1-3 (former Durbar, resp. Bīr library – Vīrapustakālaya), cf. Śāstrī 1905-1915, Grünendahl 1989, as well as Kaneko/Saito 1954. The stocks of lagat 5 (the mss. of Hemarāja Śarmā from the former Nepal National Library – Nepālarāṣṭriyapustakālaya) are catalogued in the Sūcīpatram (V.S. 2021-24, Purātattvagranthamālā 26, 27, 31, 41), cf. Grünendahl 1989, p. XVIII. Detailed infos on the history of the NAK could be found in Dimitrov 2007, p. 117 sq., esp. fn. 16.

[36a] It would have been nice to get some scans from the NGMCP for deeper inquiries, but after over an year now I’ve given it up to finally get some or even got at least some reels ordered from Berlin to make scans of my own. So, after I haven’t even got a reply to my emails thanks for no support whatsoever, and esp. for things being said like “I am really not supposed to take care of you all the day …”, “Show me all the mails you claim you’ve written to me …”, etc. when I’ve asked personally. Everybody who encouraged me to insist: no chance!

Kathmandu, Kaiser Library

The Kaiser library in Kathmandu owns two manuscripts of the Bca, and these are also available through NGMPP microfilms [37]:

fol reel
124 Palm Np 73 300 N.S. C 14/2
127 Palm Np 41 C 14/5

[37] Photographies of this collection are stored on the NGMPP microfilm reel nos. C 1/1 – C 124/6, cf. Dimitrov/Tamot 2007, p. 31.

Manuscripts from Tibet

Ye 2009 lists 7 precious old Bca manuscripts which have survived in Tibet [38]:

  • one (6.2.1) has been catalogued already by Rāhula Sāṅkṛtyāyana (1893-1963) in the Ṅor monastery [39],
  • two of them (6.2.2 [40] and 6.2.3 [41]) have been kept in the China Library of Nationalities (Zhongguo Minzu Tushuguan) in Beijing, but have been brought in 1993 into the Tibetan Museum in Lhasa [42]
  • One piece (6.2.4 [43]) have been catalogued in the Norbuliṅka,
  • two others (6.2.5 [44], 6.2.6 [45]) in the Drepung monastery,
  • while one (6.2.7 [46]) is said to be held by the Administrative Committee of Cultural Relics of the Lho ka district.

By the way, The Tucci collection does not contain any instances of Śāntideva’s poem [47].

[38] Cf. p. 231 sq. (6.2).

[39] "14 fols. (incomplete), 12×1⅔ in., Māgadhi script". Cf. Sāṅkṛtyāyana 1935, p. 37 (no. XII-4-110). "Māgadhī" as script is a term which Sāṅkṛtyāyana used to refer to Old Bengali, cf. Bandurski 1994, p. 19. On the scholar and his travels, cf. Kellner 2010.

[40] "Palm-leaf, 23 fols (complete, 10 chapters), 6 lines, 22 × 2 in., Proto-Bengālī script." Catalogued by Sāṅkṛtyāyana at Sa-skya monastery, cf. the report from 1937, p. 24 (VI-VI-196) [not available to me, but cf. Tsukamato/Matsunaga/Isoda 1990, p. 257 (no. 18)]. This manuscript was examined by Lindtner in Beijing („very accurate“) and he noted variants, cf. Lindtner 1991.

[41] "Paper, 71 fols. (incomplete, fols. 8, 9, 31, 42, 50, 59 are missing, 10 chapters), 5 lines, Eastern Nāgarī script."

[42] Cf. Steinkellner 2004, p. 23.

[43] "Paper, 38 fols. (incomplete, missing fol. 17), 8 lines, 29.9 × 6.3 cm, Gupta script."

[44] "Palm-leaf, 58 fols. (incomplete, fols. 27, 38, 39, 60 missing, 10 chapters), 5 lines, 30.2 × 4.9 cm, Gupta script […] Tibetan notes on the last folio: sgu rum dpe gang gi rgya dpe. From this we know that this manuscript comes from India and was formerly held in the sGum rum library of the Sakya Monastery."

[45] "Palm-leaf, 67 fols. (complete, 10 chapters), 5 lines, 29.1 × 5.4 cm, Dhārikā script."

[46] "Caryāvatāra, palm-leaf, 69 fols. (complete), 5 lines, 32.2 × 5.6 cm, script similar to Gupta, title on the cover: spyod ‘jug gi bzhung."

[47] Cf. Sferra 2008.

Unregarded manuscripts, reproductions

IASWR

The former Institute of Advanced Studies of World Religions (IASWR) at the State University of New York (SUNY) has microfilmed two text instances of the Bca, which could be found in their microfiche set, like it was sold to the Indological Department of Bonn University [48]:

MBB-I-1 (microfilm number MBB-1971-1-1) is a palm leaf manuscript of N.S. 880 in Bhujimola script, 5×28 cm with 7 lines, 38 numbers of leaves, the 2nd one is missing, cf. IASWR 1973. The scanned card gives the piece contains 9 chapters up to Prajñāpāramitā, chapter II begins on fol. 3r6, III on 7r4, IV on 9r8, V on 13v2, VI on 19r7, VII on 22v3, VIII on 30r1, and IX on 37r7. Unfortunately, very sloppy photographies, and in large parts hardly legible.

MBB-II-231 (microfilm number sheet and card not legible) is written in Nepalese characters, 6 lines on 42 fol. Some folios not legible.

[48] Cf. Eimer/Paffen 1988, p. 146 (duplicates of the NGMPP reels nos. B 97 and 98 are also available here). On the precious collection in Bonn, cf. Hahn 1988.

Nagoya

The Buddhist Library in Nagoya own several microfilms with photographies of Bca manuscripts from private collections in Nepal [49]:

"CA 10-3. Bodhicaryāvatāre pariṇāmanta pariccheda: (Language) Sanskrit, (Script) Devanāgarī, (Material) Paper, Hartāla on b, (Size) 26×12¼ cm., (Leaves) ff.104 (1b-104b), ex.ff. 3, (Lines) ll.6."

"CH 257. Bodhicaryā avatāra: (Language) Sanskrit, (Script) Devanāgarī, (Material) Paper, Hartāla on b, (Size) 22x12cm., (Leaves) ff.62 (1b-61b) doubled f.41, (Lines) ll.6 (f.1-54) ll.10 (f.55-last)."

"CH 314. Bodhicaryāvatāre parikathā kṛtiyamācārya śrī Śāntideva pādānam: (Language) Sanskrit, (Script) Newa: Lipi, (Date of writing) SAMVAT written in letters "NANDA-ŚARA-KHACARE" [50], (Material) Paper, Hartāla on b, (Size) 31¾x11 cm., (Leaves) ff.65 (1b-65b), (Lines) ll.7."

"DH 219. Bodhicaryyāvatāre Prajñāpāramitā pariccheda: (Language) Sanskrit, (Script) Devanāgarī, (Material and form of MS) Paper, Hartāla on one side, Banded, (Size) 22¾x15cm., (Pages) pp.57, (Lines) ll.20."

[49] Cf. Takaoka 1981. Cited from Tsukamato/Matsunaga/Isoda 1990, p. 258.

[50] Probably "9-5-0", cf. Sircar 1965, p. 230 sq.

NGMPP

The NGMPP holds several microfilm rolls in the State Library Berlin with photographies of manuscripts from private collections [51]:

reel fol
E 910/1 Dn 76
E 910/10 Dn 29
E 1099/1 Np 65 1839 A.D.
E 1256/7 Np 26
E 1518/5 Palm Np 32
E 1553/2 Dn 79
E 1357/2 Dn 46 1937 A.D.
E 1375/3 Dn 86
E 1484/13 Dn 9
E 1700/9 Np 80
E 1730/16 Dn 76
E 1730/17 Dn 28
E 1838/4 Dn 49 1816 A.D.
E 2511/1 Np 47
E 3227/17 Dn 8
H 3/3 Dn 6
H 44/5 82 1924 A.D.
H 321/7 Np 63
H 380/8 Np 17 1644 A.D.
H 1086/5 Dn 61

[51] For the NGMPP items cf. the NGMCP project database: http://134.100.72.204:3000/account/login. Reels carrying the siglum "E" have been filmed from private collections in Kathmandu, "H" from private collections in Patan, cf. Moriguchi 1989, p. VIII.

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Cabaton 1907

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Chakravati 1959-60

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Colas 1986

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Dimitrov/Tamot 2007

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Eimer 2006

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Beautiful Thangka for sale

I have a beautiful big Thanka here that I would like to sale. I’m not so into these, but that one definitely isn’t one of the typical tourist pieces. It’s in a good condition instead of two rents, a bigger and a smaller one in the lower right area, fortunately none of the beautiful small paintings is substantially damaged by that (please check out the snapshots here). So, the Thangka should necessarily be repaired resp. stiched and would be of course best put professionally framed and glazed anyway for such a bright piece. The whole thing is of approx. 84 x 132 cm, the painting itself is approx. 55 x 78 cm.

If you would be interested in buying the Thangka, please send me your offer via Email. I have a appropriate shipping tube here. International shipping would be of course possible, and the payment could be arranged via Paypal – but every detail is of course open to negotiation and suggestions. If I could give any further information, please don’t hesitate to ask me.

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