Project: "Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal"
Südasien-Institut (SAI)
Universität Heidelberg
Voßstr. 2, Gebäude 4130 | 69115 Heidelberg
Telefon: +49 (0) 6221 / 54 15207
E-Mail: nepal[at]hadw-bw.de
The editorial approach adopted here seeks to reproduce the texts as closely as possible rather than to normalize them, thereby preserving the historical linguistic features of the documents in full. Variations in orthography, grammar, and other linguistic features are treated as integral characteristics of the texts and are therefore retained. Each document is edited as a codex unicus, even in cases where certified copies are known to exist.
| [...] | lost text |
| [?] | illegible text |
| [रा] | editorial addition |
| ⟪ ⟫ | scribal addition |
| Crossed-out text | scribal deletion |
| {.} | editorial deletion |
The XML editions can be viewed in three different display modes.
This mode reproduces the original document as faithfully as possible. It preserves all orthographic, palaeographic, and layout features, including:
This mode is identical to the diplomatic display except that word boundaries are introduced to facilitate reading.
The annotated edition aims to balance readability with fidelity to the original. It introduces only minimal editorial intervention in the form of carefully considered normalizations and corrections.
Punctuation has been regularized to improve readability and to facilitate comparison with the translations. Middle dots preserved in the diplomatic edition are omitted. Macrons and horizontal lines of different shapes are represented uniformly as ---. Daṇḍas are introduced to mark the end of a sentence or other sentence-like syntactic unit. Hyphens are inserted where a word continues across a line break.
Original spellings are retained wherever possible. The only systematic regularizations concern the distinction between ṣ and kh, and between v and b, following the standard spellings of the Nepālī Bṛhat Śabdakośa (Parājulī et al. 1995), irrespective of whether these distinctions reflect contemporary pronunciation. In the manuscripts themselves, only ṣ and v are normally written, although v is occasionally distinguished from b by means of a nuktā. Such nuktās, together with those sporadically used to distinguish ya from pa, are omitted.
In passages written in khasa-bhāṣā (later known as Nepali), characteristic orthographic variation (cf. Riccardi 1971: 18–23) has not been normalized. This includes, in particular:
Uncertain readings and editorial corrections are indicated by underdots beneath the relevant characters and are further explained in pop-up annotations.
When the transliteration display is selected, daṇḍas are rendered as full stops. The editions employ transliteration rather than transcription; consequently, inherent a is retained in all positions, including word-final and medial positions, irrespective of its historical pronunciation. The same transliteration principles apply to all textual quotations in the Abstract, Translation, Commentary, and Footnotes.