On the Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā at the Asiatic Society of Bengal

There are three manuscripts of Prajñākaramati’s Bodhicaryāvatāra-pañjikā listed in the Descriptive Catalogue of Sanscrit Manuscripts in the Government Collection of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal of 1917 [1], cf. pp. 49 seq.:

• “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 | …”
• “50. 9979. bodhicaryyāvatāra. Bodhicaryāvatāra and the Pañjikā commentary. [...] Four seasoned palm-leaves. 20 x 2. Written in old Newari Character. I. Bodhicaryāvatāra with six lines on a page, faded, containing the colophon: – bodhicaryyāvatāre dhyānapāramitā ‘ṣṭamaḥ paricchedaḥ | …”
• “51. 3829. bodhicaryāvatāraṭīkā. [...] Substance, palm-leaf, 12 x 2 inches. Folio, 109. Lines, 6 on a page. Extend 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 | …”

But I think the entries could be more precise. Considering the colophon line it seems that item no. 49 is another manuscript of the ninth chapter of Prajñākaramati’s commentary which seems to be transmitted independently carrying the title Bca-ṭīkā just like item no. 51 (Vaidya claims that the Ṭīkā was composed before as an independent text, cf. [2], p. ix. This is a tempting theory because it would explain why Prajñākaramati doesn’t commented on the tenth chapter of the Bca). So therefore there were resp. there are two witnesses of the commentary on the ninth chapter – the Ṭīkā, and one manuscript of chapters 1-8. The lacunae in La Vallée Poussin’s original edition ([3], 3,22-4,45 & 8,109-186 [end of 8th chapter]) also suggest that there wasn’t another text instance.

In the eleventh volume of the Notices on Sanskrit manuscripts [4] Haraprasāda Śāstrī reports in 1895 about two manuscripts of Prajñākaramati’s commentary that he has aquired that time (p. 7). He writes that one Nepalese item carries the whole text and another Maithilī manuscript carries the ninth chapter only (the confusion between Maithilī and Bengalī suggest that the script of this manuscript is Old Bengalī which Roth called “Proto-Bengali-Cum-Proto-Maithili”, cf. [5], pp. 32 seq.). The Nepalese manuscript he had described in the same way before in his article On a new find of old Nepalese manuscripts [6], and it is stated in the catalogue that the record was taken from this article because the piece was still borrowed away to La Vallée Poussin.

The information on the regarded material given by La Vallée Poussin in both editions, the one of the whole text and also his previous edition of the Ṭīkā of 1889 ([7], p. 233), is very meagre, but in both works he points to Haraprasāda Śāstri’s Notices concerning the regarded material. So my solution for this puzzle would be to assume that what is no. 50 in the catalogue was bundled together with no. 49 the time it was discovered and separated later, and so is recognized for carrying the whole text of Prajñākaramati’s commentary. That would also mean that the script of both pieces not differs significant.

By the way, the item numbers of the pieces (9979 in comparison with 3829 and 3830) are in line with that. Funny: the line iti prajñākaramativiracitāyāṃ bodhicaryāvatārapañjikāyāṃ prajñāpāramitāparicchedo navamaḥ in Vaidya’s edition ([2], p.282) couldn’t be found nowhere in the manuscripts – shame, shame shame!

References

[1] Hara Prasad Shāstri (Comp.): A descriptive catalogue of Sanscrit manuscripts under the care of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 1: Buddhist manusripts. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press 1917

[2] P[araśurām] L[akṣman] Vaidya (Ed.): Bodhicaryāvatāra of Śāntideva with the commentary Pañjikā of Prajñākaramati. Bombay: Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning Darbhanga 1960 (Buddhist Sanskrit Texts 12)

[3] Louis de La Vallée Poussin (Ed.): Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā. Prajñākaramati’s commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra of Çāntideva. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press 1901-14 (Bibliotheca Indica 150, fasc. 983, 1031, 1090, 1126, 1139, 1305, 1399)

[4] Haraprasád Sástri: Notices of Sanskrit mss 11. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press 1895

[5] Dragomir Dimitrov: Tables of Old Bengali script. In: D.Dimitrov, U.Roesler, R.Steiner (Eds.): Indian and Tibetan Studies. Wien 2002 (Wiener Studien 53), pp. 27-78

[6] Hara Prasád Shástri: On a new find of old Nepalese manuscripts. In: Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Part 3: Anthropology 3 (1893), pp. 245-49

[7] Louis de La Vallée Poussin (Ed.): Bouddhisme. Études et Matériaux. Ādikarmapradīpa. Bodhicaryāvatāraṭīkā. London: Luzac & Co. 1898 [Bca-ṭīkā pp. 233-388]

LaTeX reloaded: Lua(La)TeX is coming up

LuaTeX is an ambitious TeX project which combines the TeX engine with the highly versatile scripting language Lua through embedding a Lua interpreter into it. Like its somewhat cognate XeTeX it is a replacement for pdfTeX and produces Pdf documents from the TeX source directly. LuaTeX is natively Unicode capable and makes use of up-to-date OpenType font technology. But the most advantage this TeX engine is getting from embedding Lua. It’s not only working as extension to the typesetting engine but also as extension to the macro language itself. So LuaTeX packages could consist of only one line calling a Lua source code file to the document and it’s also possible to run Lua code directly from the document. In the not so far away future this could mean to have dream LaTeX applications like a postprocessor-free Sanskrit sorting order index module or other very fancy things like this. It’s definitely a development to watch!

The first beta (0.10) was released at the TUG 2007 conference, currently 0.25.4 is included in TeX Live 2008, 0.40 came out recently (BachoTeX 2009 release) and is going to be part of Tex Live 2009, 0.50 and 0.60 are announced still for this year (see the roadmap on the project homepage). It is sponsored by the Oriental TeX project at the Colorado State University (cf. I.S. Hamid: OrientalTeX. A new direction in scholarly complex-script typesetting {TUGboat 28,1 (2007), 11). Developing it means also to make more and more of the TeX internals available to the Lua interpreter. Currently LuaTeX is primarily working as an engine for TeX and TeX formats like ConTeXt, but recently there are the first basic LuaLaTeX packages available.

A set of rudimentary LuaLaTeX packages providedby Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard are now available at his GitHub account (Git is a version control system – you can download them manually but the best way is to use a Git client software). The packets are also to be found on CTAN, directory macros/luatex.The packet luatextra includes low-level macros and an inputenc. And there is also a fontspec module. That’s enough to get a LuaLaTeX document rolling but unfortunately it came out that it is not so easy to get a running LuaLaTeX distribution right now. My Linux (Debian Squeeze/Testing) employs an independent LuaTeX 0.40 (here), which is really up-to-date but comes without compiled LuaLaTeX format files, which are no that easy to hand-make. I don’t know how the situation is going to be on other OSs. Anyway, I’ve been told that TeX Live 2009 is going to include the format files and so that is going to be the next big toy.

Further readings/watchings:

Towards LuaTeX: H. Hagen: Introduction to the LuaTeX project {talk at TUG 2007 conference}; Where does TeX end, Lua start and vice-versa {talk at TUG 2008 conference}; LuaTeX. Howling to the moon {TUGboat 26,2 (2006), 152-57}; The TeX-Lua mix {TUGboat 29,3 (2008), 383-91}; T. Hoekwater: LuaTeX: what has been done, and what will be done {talk at TUG 2008 conference}, LuaTeX {TUGboat 28,3 (2007), 312-13}; OpenType fonts in LuaTeX {TUGboat 29,1 (2008), 34-35}

Towards Lua: R. Ierusalimschy: About Lua {talk TUG 2007}; K. Jung / A. Brown: Beginning Lua programming. Wiley 2007. ISBN 978-0-470-06917-2; Lua 5.1 Reference Manual; bookshelf at the project page

A collection of some online available* journals

*Includes “partly online available” and “online available depending if subscribed to (individually or by your library)“

Acta Orientalia Vilnensia (ISSN 1648-2662)

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (ISSN 0041-977x, current volume for free here)

Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie (ISSN 076-1177)

eJournal of Indian medicine (eJIM)

Indologica Taurinensia (IT, ISSN 1023-3881)

Journal asiatique (JA, ISSN 0021-762x)

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JRAS, ISSN 13561863)

International Journal of Jaina Studies (IJJS, ISSN 1748-1074)

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies (JIATS, ISSN 1550-6363)

Journal of Oriental Studies (ISSN 0915-5309)

Journal of Buddhist Ethics (JBE, ISSN 1076-9005)

Indo-Iranian Journal (IIJ, ISSN (online ed.) 1572-8563)

Journal of South Asian Linguistics (JSAL)

Journal of Indian Philosophy (JIP, ISSN (online ed.) 1573-0395).

Journal of the American Oriental Society (JAOS, ISSN 0003-0279)

Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies / Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (JIBS, ISSN 0019-4344)

International Journal of Tantric Studies (IJTS, ISSN 1084-7553)

Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS, ISSN 1084-7561)

Journal of South Asia Women Studies (JSAWS, ISSN 1084-7478)

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (ISSN 0030-5383)

Philosophy East and West (ISSN 0031-8221)

Annual Report of the Internation Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University (ARIRIAB, ISSN 1343-8980)

Buddhist Studies Review (BSR, ISSN 0256-2897, online  ed. 1747-9681)

Rivista degli studi orientali (ISSN 0392-4866)

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG, ISSN 0341-0137)

Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens (WZKS, ISSN (online ed.) 1728-3124)

There are a lot of other journals available at the THDL. If you didn’t already knew, an outstanding tool for bibiographing relevant journal articles is SARDS 2. Keep up with E-Toc-Alert in Heidelberg. Peter Wyzlic runs reviews @ Indologica.de (“Zeitschriftenschau”).

This posting is open for additions, please don’t hesitate to drop an addition. Thanks in advance!