I’m currently preparing the Madhyama Agama for Bilara. This was a project that I started a couple years ago but then put on hold for a number of technical issues that arose.
Something that I realized as I put together the first batch of sutras for MA is that the markup in Bilara doesn’t really exist at this point to include all of the intro information that’s found in Chinese translations. Currently, each sutra has a heading for the collection it belongs to (Madhyama Agama, e.g.) and it’s own title. Nothing else.
For the Madhyama Agama, there are headings for eighteen chapters that each have uddana verses that immediately follow them. We have markup for uddana verses, but they occur at the end of chapters in the Nikayas. The Chinese translations also have fascicle headers and enders and bibliographical information (era, place, and head of the translation project, sometimes dates as well) that follows the header for each fascicle.
When I look at the legacy site’s CBETA texts, I see that a header was created for these items, which looks like this:
Should we replicate this in some way? If so, what markup should be use for this header info? Can I create a standard for this myself and let SuttaCentral figure out how to style it later?
Along the same lines, MA has eighteen chapters in five recitations. We should probably create the chapter structure for MA as was done for the Pali Nikayas on SuttaCentral to indicate that it exists.
You should be able to add the markup to Bilara no problems, use <p> or <span> tags as makes sense. Keep things simple, and follow the existing pattern if that is possible. I’m not sure if the existing CSS classes will automatically apply to Bilara, but I suspect not. never mind, we can add those easily enough.
If you can, keep a list of these extra classes so we can make sure they are all accounted for.
One thing to bear in mind, when your translations are ready for our publications pipeline, i.e. we will publish them as books, the HTML will be converted to LaTeX. Simple class-based styles should be no problem, but everything gets more complicated quickly. For example, it’s better to declare classes explicitly rather than rely on the cascade (which LaTeX does not have).
As for document structure, that would be great, we can add that to the relevant tree files and elsewhere as needed. It’s obviously best if we can stick to the similar format as the pali where possible, but where that is difficult, it’s no problem to extend that.
Again, this will play into printing. I’m wondering if the 18 chapters have anything corresponding to the pannasa of the Pali? Otherwise for printing we might divide MA into say, three chapters of six, or whatever division makes sense.
What MA has are five “recitations” (誦), which apparently mark off the material to be recited in one day. They aren’t true divisions but a guide for reciters. A couple chapters are split between one recitation and the next, so it’s a bit awkward.
Is there any evidence that Chinese monks were reciting their Tripitaka texts in Chinese (whether from memory or from a manuscript), or could those recitation markers simply be identical translations of the original texts they were translating from?
Interesting. The Pali has that too sometimes, but not as a division between groups of texts, but as a division within one single long text. Some DN suttas have several “passages for recitation”.
In this case, my assumption would be that it was something included in the original Indic text. East Asian monastics have made a practice for a long time of reciting scriptures based on the concept that it makes merit, but I have not seen any sources mentioning the Madhyama Agama specifically. Usually they were reciting Mahayana sutras like the Saddharmapundarika or Vajracchedika.
Chinese sources do speak of Indian monks reciting large texts from memory when they describe translation projects. The best example off the top of my head is the Ekottarika Agama, described in Palumbo’s An Early Chinese Commentary on the Ekottarika Agama (2013). He devotes a good portion of the book to an historical study of the Ekottarika translation as it has come down to us.
No worries, when it comes time for printing we’ll have to consider the best way of dividing up the text, hopefully relying on a meaningful division in the text itself.
