{"id":287,"date":"2016-09-06T19:57:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-06T17:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/?p=287"},"modified":"2020-09-15T17:42:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T15:42:41","slug":"re%e2%80%90editing-gandhari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/?p=287","title":{"rendered":"Re\u2010Editing G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we first began studying G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b, the decipherment and edition of newly\u2010discovered G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b manuscripts was \u2013 as it continues to be \u2013 very much the focus of the field. But lurking just beyond the horizon was the idea of one day creating a \u2018new Konow<\/a>\u2019 or a \u2018new Boyer<\/a>,\u2019 informed by the new manuscript discoveries and shedding light on them in return. As we compiled our source corpus for the Dictionary of G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b<\/i><\/a> and described it in our Catalog<\/i><\/a>, we kept this greater goal of a comprehensive and consistent presentation of all G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b texts always in sight.<\/p>\n

Konow\u2019s corpus of Kharo\u1e63\u1e6dh\u012b inscriptions, published in 1929, contained a total of 96 items then known. For each of them, he described the circumstances of its discovery and the interpretations that it had received in earlier scholarship, before arriving at his own conclusions regarding each inscription\u2019s meaning. Konow also provided visual documentation of all inscriptions to help readers form their own opinion, and a glossary to make his corpus easily accessible. The task of Boyer, Rapson and Senart\u2019s 1920\u201329 edition of the Central Asian Kharo\u1e63\u1e6dh\u012b documents was at the same time easier and more difficult than Konow\u2019s: for the most part there was no previous history of scholarship on these documents to evaluate, but by the same token they had to face the interpretive difficulties of their material from scratch.<\/p>\n

Now that our collection of Dictionary<\/i> source texts has reached completion, we find that we are providing \u2013 and could hardly have avoided to provide \u2013 many of the same services as Konow, but for a corpus including not only the 1,108 inscriptions now known, but a total of 2,743 items. We document the history of study of G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b texts in our Bibliography<\/i><\/a>, and from the available editions we selected the overall best ones as base texts for the Dictionary<\/i>. Since the quality of published G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b editions is very uneven, however, and knowledge of the language has greatly increased in recent years, we critically evaluate each and every reading in these base texts and make corrections where needed. In all such cases, the readings of the base edition (and others) are recorded in notes and our choice justified. A forthcoming software upgrade<\/a> will help us extend our documentation of variant interpretations to all historical editions, giving users of the Dictionary<\/i> full access to ghost words and other dispreferred readings, and at the same time providing them with the complete evidence on which the solutions adopted in the Dictionary<\/i> are based. Last not least, over the last fifteen years we collected comprehensive photographic documentation for our source texts, which we will make available side by side with our source texts to further support the interpretations adopted.<\/p>\n

In effect then, the Dictionary of G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b<\/i> does what every critical dictionary has to do: it provides a complete re\u2010edition of its source corpus. This is a second\u2010order edition in the sense that we only cover material previously published and document existing interpretations. At the same time, however, it is an original edition since for all texts it is based on our own judgement and incorporates our own improvements. It does not pretend to be a final edition of every single text, but rather aims to provide \u2013 as Konow and Boyer did \u2013 a reliable framework for future research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we first began studying G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b, the decipherment and edition of newly\u2010discovered G\u0101ndh\u0101r\u012b manuscripts was \u2013 as it continues to be \u2013 very much the focus of the field. But lurking just beyond the horizon was the idea of one day creating a \u2018new Konow\u2019 or a \u2018new Boyer,\u2019 informed by the new manuscript discoveries […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":424,"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gandhari.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}