HL 2396414 OSKAR VON HINUBER KLEINE SCHRIFTEN TEILI HERAUSGEGEBEN VON HARRY FALK UND WALTER SLAJE 2009 HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG - WIESBADENBibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzcichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen ‘Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibtiografische Daten sind im Internet iber hitp:/Ainb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationatbibliothek ‘The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet at hitp://dnb.d-nb.de. Informationen zum Verlagsprogramm finden Sie unter hitp:/www.harrassowitz-verlag.de © Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden 2009 Das Werk einschlieBlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschiitzt. Jede Verwertung auBerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulissig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere fiir Vervielfaltigungen jeder Art, Ubersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und fiir die Einspeicherung in elektronische Systeme. Gedruckt auf alterungsbestiindigem Papier. Druck und Verarbeitung: Hubert & Co., Gi Printed in Germany ISSN 0170-3455 ISBN 978-3-447-05850-6 K 2c09~ 12459On the Tradition of Pali Texts in India, Ceylon and Burma By OSKAR VON HINUBER vicitranayam hi Bhagavato pavacanam Aggavamsa, Saddaniti 627. 16 Tho foundation of any philological investigation into a written text is the wording of that text as handed down by tradition, This selfevident statement means that wo have to ascertain whether the wording of the text, as we have it today, reflects what has been written down by the author himself, or, if not, how much time interyones between the auto- graph and our manuscripts. Whilo editors, for example, or any literature Written within tho last few centuries in Europe are mostly lucky enough to possess early prints, perhaps contemporaneous to the author,) Sometimes even his autograph, this happy coincidence does not mark the situation an editor of older literature, say in Greek or Latin,?) is in, On the contrary, editors of texts belonging to the European or to the In- dian antiquity have before themselves copies mostly separated by centuries, if not by more than a millennium, from the autograph, The big gap between the first redaction of our Pali-canon and the basis of the texts as we have them today, becomes evident at once, if we bear in mind that there is no manuscript older than about 400 years,*) with the only exception, as far as I know, of a tenth century inaya-fragment in Pali found in Nepal.) ‘Thus tho editors of this kind of text have to content themselves with the reconstruction of the archetypus of all our manuscripts, which might be quite far away in time from the autograph, or as we should Tather put it in most cases whon dealing with Indian texts, from the text as formulated by a teacher. The first task of an editor, therefore, should be to find out where and when his archetypus was written, Now, as far as the canonical Pali‘) texts are concerned, we are in a very similar position to an editor of Homer, i.e. we do not know either *) On tho special problems of editing recont texta: Texte und Varianton, Pro- bleme ihrer Edition und Interprotation, hg. v. GC. Martens und H, Zeller, Min- chen 1971. 8) On editing theso texts: P. Maas, Toxtkritik, Leipzig* 1957. *) H, Smith, Saddaniti, La grammaire palio d’Aggavamsa, Lund 1928, Avant- Propos, p.V. ‘) Cf. P. V. Bapat, A Pali manuscript in an Indian Script, in: Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Rescarch Institute 33, 1952, pp. 197-210. *) On editing Indian texts ef. W. Kirfel, Textiberlieforung und Textkritik in der indischen Philologio, in: Litterae Orientales 45, Leipzig 1931, pp. 1-11 and . M. Katro, Introduction to Indian textual criticism, *Poona 1954. [293]