[Y-Indology] Textual Criticism and Cladistic techniques

[Guest guest]

Dear list members,

 

I've just found the on-line article where Dr. O'Hara discusses his use of

cladistics in the textual criticism of the Norse fable manuscripts.

 

http://rjohara.uncg.edu/cv/1996RHC.html

 

Best,

Harry

 

Harry Spier

371 Brickman Road

Hurleyville, NY

12747

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

H. Spier wrote:

>I've just found the on-line article where Dr. O'Hara discusses his use of

>cladistics in the textual criticism of the Norse fable manuscripts.

>

>http://rjohara.uncg.edu/cv/1996RHC.html

 

 

For this, cf. also the similar report, involving Robinson, discussed in:

 

Discover. The world of Science, Dec.'98, p.34 etc.

 

(reported & discussed in: "Classical Studies and Indology". In: H. Nakatani

(ed.) Reconstitution of Classical Studies. Special Issue : A Report on the

First Symposium towards a Reconstitution of Classical Studies, No. 3. 3/11/

Heisei 11 /[1999]: 16-36 ):

 

The biochemist Chr. Howe of Cambridge U., together with the MS scholar

Peter Robinson of de Montford U., Leicester, have tested Chaucer's

Canterbury tales based on a (tree-like) computer program that has been used

for DNA analysis. Howe thought that his program would provide better

analysis than the traditional step by step human approach.

 

However useful this approach might be, I find the results as summed up in a

popular science magazine somewhat naive: "of 58 mss..., 11 ... have fewest

variations but even they contain significant differences... [therefore]

Chaucer's original text [of 850 lines of 'Wife of Bath's Prologue', a part

of the Canterbury Tales] was probably not a finished product but a working

draft... the 11 copies ... incorporate different versions of that rough

draft... In the ... Prologue there are some 26 lines ... that occur in

some MSS but not in others... Chaucer wrote these originally and then

changed his mind and decided that he would delete them. "

 

 

 

* The older paper, brought to our knowledge by H.Spier, acknowledges the

bugbear of all stemmatic/cladistic reconstructions: contaminiation by a MSS

from other branches of the tradition.

 

However, this can often be solved, for example in India, by paying close

attention to oral pecularaiies and paleograph, But... it has not been done,

except by those working on the Paippalada Atharvaveda tradition, as

reported by C. Lopez.

 

For this, it is important to produce better palaeographies, especially of

MSS of the 2nd mill. CE, AND also, as recently stressed in the discussion

of (Veda) pronunciation of S/kh, better accounts of local pronuciation.

 

All lacunae. In our knowledge.

 

As you know, lacunae always are a shortcut in establishing a stemma. In

this case: that of the inadequacy of "scholarly' editions of Skt. texts.

There ain't any, barring a handful....

 

See the old discussion in INDOLOGY (liverpool) of soem 5-6 years ago.

 

---------------

 

P. Maas, Textual Criticism, Oxford 1968 (transl. from "Textkritik", in: A.

Gercke, E. Norden (eds.) Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft,

Leipzig/Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1922 (Bd. I, 3rd ed., 1927, 1949, 1957, part

VII)

 

M. L. West, Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique Applicable to Greek

and Latin texts. Stuttgart: Teubner 1973.

 

 

 

 

 

========================================================

Michael Witzel

Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University

2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

 

ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages)

home page: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm