Proofreading the Mahavastu

Bhante. Please find attached updated file with the verses of the hells arranged within the < blockquote > tags and line breaks so that each stanza contains 4 lines. I hope the arrangement is ok. Thanks.

mvu-en.zip (618.6 KB)

The Mvu: a hell called “Saṃghāta” in the html file is “Sanghāta” in the pdf file. As I am following the pdf I am replacing Saṃghāta with Sanghāta but I am starting to have my doubts and think Saṃghāta may actually be correct. Any ideas anyone?

Hi Stu,

Saṃghāta is actually correct.

With metta from Perth.

Thank you Ajahn. I shall stick with Saṃghāta then.

Hi Stu,

The HTML for the verses is fine, thanks.

The only detail to watch out for is to try to not have any very long lines. You want to break the lines so they’re not too uneven. The reason is that the text will align itself based on the length of the longest line. If just one line in a set of verses is very long, the entire set will push itself against the left margin, and it won’t look very nice. So either use an extra line or rebalance the line breaks. There’s only a few verses where this is an issue, for example:

Gotama, the Exalted One,
the seer with clear insight into all things,
has in his understanding named the eight hells,
Sañjīva, Kālasūtra, Sanghāta, the two Rauravas, Mahāvīci, Tapana and Pratāpana.

I’d make this

Gotama, the Exalted One,
the seer with clear insight into all things,
has in his understanding named the eight hells,
Sañjīva, Kālasūtra, Sanghāta, the two Rauravas,
Mahāvīci, Tapana and Pratāpana.

and for

In the hell Pratāpana
there are creatures armed with sharp pikes, and having jaws of iron.
There is a fearful mountain,
one great solid mass of fire.

I’d do something like

In the hell Pratāpana there are creatures
armed with sharp pikes, and having jaws of iron.
There is a fearful mountain,
one great solid mass of fire.

Interestingly enough, we are now supposed to change the spelling of the word “Sanskrit” to reflect exactly this difference. Samskrit: we’ve been doing it wrong!

Ok, I understand that rationale. It makes sense. Thanks. I shall fix up those lines you’ve highlighted. I’ll also have a look at the other lines in the verse and fix up any others that may also be too long.

Samskrit it is then! Or is it Saṃskrit?

Well, Saṁskrit is better, or even better still, Saṁskrita. But we’re using a modern version of it, so whatever. We’ll see if the new spelling takes off.

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OMG, really? I wonder if this will actually bcome acceptable, in terms of actually being used.

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in India most likely but hardly outside because Indian regulations are not binding abroad and since for the Westerners it’s all the same anyway, we don’t have sounds represented by anusvara, except maybe the French, but they don’t use special character for the nasal sound AFAIK
for the same reason we have variant spellings samskara/sanskara, samsara/sansara

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Bhante. Is there scope in this proof-reading activity to seek suggestions for alternatives to some words in this translation we are using? (Or are we staying true to the translation?)

I’m not sure about ‘immortality’ in the following:

Mvu, p. 24: “When they heard the elder, several thousands of devas and men attained immortality.”

It’s a deep, deep rabbit hole. The text itself is extremely difficult, and full of problems that only a detailed, long term study could address. We might start with good intentions. Oh yes! Just one or two obvious things. Nothing more. But what about this one: hang on, let me check the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary …

So my take would be, it’s not worth it.

Never forget. When Faqing set out to from China to get texts from India, at times he had no other guide through the desert than the bones of previous pilgrims. In just the same way, the home page of the Critical Pali Dictionary has as its first heading: “Prefaces and Obituaries”. Let us not die while doing this project!

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Ha ha! Yes. As soon as you started explaining, I started getting images of myself up all hours of the night, working alone, trying to improve the translation with words here and there, never feeling quite satisfied… bit scary really!

I think your right. I’ll just stick to the text the way it is.

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as the saying goes “the best is an enemy of the good” :relaxed:

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Bhante. Part of a verse on the 76th page of the pdf (p.55 of the Mvu) has the following stanza:

“He who bore the excellent marks of a Great Man has passed away, he who was our Master, the guide of Suras and Asuras. What does it profit us to tarry in the world any longer? Let us now abandon our bodies.”

This part of the verse is completely absent in the html file.

This is the second time I have come across a small section of text which appears in the pdf but is absent in the html.

The first time I noticed this (about p. 25 of the Mvu) I thought it was a bit strange but just wrote the missing text in.

I am just wondering if you know why occasional sections of text may be absent in the html?

Thank you.

It’s just a glitch. Either there was a fault in the OCR, or perhaps in the preparation of the file for you.

People often think that oral texts are unreliable, but digital texts are probably the least stable form of document preservation ever developed!

Ok, thanks. :smile:
Then perhaps I should start committing the Mvu to memory & chant it to others!

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What an excellent idea! Just do the proofing first, okay?

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Bhante. Please find attached an update. I am up to p. 66 of the Mvu = line 1152 of the html file. I will be away here and there over the next couple of weeks (inc a few days at Santi and the ASA AGM) so then next update you receive may not be for another 3 - 4 weeks. Kind regards.

mvu-en.zip (620.2 KB)

no problems, take you time. And I hope the meetings go well.

Bhante. I’m currently up to p. 80 of the Mvu. The verses are now starting to become more common. Looking at the remainder of Vol. 1, verses appear to make up to between a quarter to a third of the entire text (perhaps more).

I’m having an issue with our original approach:

A lot of the ‘verse material’ (ie, the text which is indented and italicised in the pdf) is starting to appear is less poetic in structure and more like prose and breaking long verse lines into shorter lines is, in places, starting to become a bit ‘unnatural’.

For example, following our convention, the following verse:

She went, and wandered forth with her women, roaming the forest, glad and happy and eager. While she paced the forest, she espied a tree bearing fresh creepers and shoots, and, in the rapture of perfect joy and gladness she grasped a branch of it, and playfully lingered there. As she held the branch she gave birth to the Conqueror of the unconquered mind, the great supreme seer.

becomes:

She went, and wandered forth with her women,
roaming the forest, glad and happy and eager.
While she paced the forest, she espied a lumbini tree
bearing fresh creepers and shoots, and,
in the rapture of perfect joy and gladness
she grasped a branch of it, and playfully lingered there.
As she held the branch she gave birth
to the Conqueror of the unconquered mind,
the great supreme seer.

Not only does it take quite a bit of time shortening the length of the lines, I am not sure it is necessary. The original text does not display the verses in the way we are doing it and it can manipulate the verses sometimes in ways that, I think, change the interpretation slightly (maybe not so much with that example, but for some other verses where I have shortened the lines, I have felt that I am changing the context slightly).

You said:

However, I have found that with < blockquote >, regardless of whether the lines are shortened or not, when viewed in the browser, the distance the left margin is indented remains the same. (But perhaps I’m missing a certain point here?)

So, I am recommending that for verses that are less poetic and more prose like, we do not shorten the lines. In fact, I am wondering whether we should shorten any of the lines at all; this would be in accordance with the original text and save quite a bit of time.

I recommend this cautiously however, as I may be missing something real obvious here that I overlooked or was not aware of.