Sorry to reactivate such a old thread but I’m hoping that the issue could be revisited.
Consider this user profile: Someone who is not familiar with the Bhikkhuni Vinaya is trying to educate themselves by reading articles on line. They see a citation for Bi Pc 109 and they want to look it up. This is what they see:
For someone not familiar with the notion of parallels, it would be reasonable to conclude that there was no English translation for the rule and they might give up. When they are confronted with this situation several times they may give up trying to educated themselves about the Bhikkhuni rules because in their experience there are no translations for many of the rules. “What’s the point?”
Even if someone is familiar with the notion of parallels, they may not immediately imagine that what they are looking for is a parallel. They are looking for a rule that they can reasonably expect to actually exist. Not that they are looking for something that might be similar.
But then lets imagine that they do, out of desperation click on the parallel link (which doesn’t look like much of a link, but we can let that slide). This is what they see:
I’m not clear on what Bhikkhu Parivāra Pācittiya 13 is there. It is not an active link to a translation. It appears that there is a link hidden underneath the text (you can right click and select open link in new tab), but it is a link to suttacentral.net/pli-tv-bi-vb-pc109/pli/ which doesn’t exist.
At the very least it should be a real link to Bhikkhu Vibhanga Pācittiya 13.
I totally get that this is a complicated problem. However I think there is a reasonable solution that shouldn’t be ignored simply because it’s not a perfect solution.
Since the Pali names of the rules for the Bhikkhunis can be reasonably inferred, I suggest creating a very bare bones root json file for all of the Bhikkhuni rules that are “the same” as Bhikkhu rules. It could have the name of the rule in Pali and then a blank segment. This would allow translators to include a line stating something like
The text of Bhikkhuni Vibhanga Paccitiya 109 is not included in any Pali manuscripts. It is the same as Bhikkhu Parivāra Pācittiya 13.
Advantages:
- It requires no new coding (as far as I can tell, but obviously I don’t know for sure.)
- It is completely unambiguious for even someone brand new to looking at the Bhikkhuni Vinaya
- If a better solution can be created in the future, these files can simply be deleted.
- It should be able to work seamlessly with the new publication project, for both print and digital editions
- There would be no need to check behind a parallels interface.
- For people using the Bilara data outside of SC, there is no need to integrate the parallel dataset. Users get what they want for the Bhikkhuni rules just as easily as they do for the Bhikkhu rules.
- It removes an unnecessary barrier to people learning about the Bhikkhuni rules, which is a Vinaya obligation for both Bhikkhunis and Bhikkhus.
Disadvantages
- There is a slight chance that people might infer that the Pali titles of the Bhikkhuni rules can be found in existing manuscripts. However people working at that level would likely be aware that titles of most things are not an ancient part of the texts.
- The user still has to click on a link that forces them to click on a second link. (The first link being what would otherwise look like a link to the full translation. The second would be the link in that takes them to the Bhikkhu version of the rule)
I’m bringing this up because of an ongoing discussion I’m having about a project to create an ebook of the Vinaya translation from the Bilara data. So regarding this, I’m wondering if Vens @Brahmali , @Pasanna or @Khemarato.bhikkhu could comment if my suggestion above would help with that.