What's going on with pli-tv-bu-vb-as: Adhikaraṇasamatha

I"m curious about how the Adhikaraṇasamatha appear on the site:

https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-bu-vb-as?view=normal

All of the Pali (and Bhante Brahmalli’s translation) is there, but they are at the top. I’m sure there is a reason for this but it looks really odd. I know how hard it is to deal with edge cases, but there should (IMO at least) be some explanatory text at the top of that page informing what’s happening.

I have also noticed that there are empty cards in the Bhikkhuni Vibhanga. I understand why (they follow the rule as written for monks) But as far as user interfaces go, it’s less that ideal and could lead to confusion. I believe both of these issues are because of tracking parallels. But there needs to be some explanation of what’s going on.

Good point!

Normally we treat “text” and “parallels” together. This kind of issue comes up in cases where it is hard to do this. With Adhikaranasamathas, it’s because the “text” is just a list, each one is just one word. Yet we list the parallels for each one separately.

Another case is the patimokkhas, where the text appears in a single file, yet there are many thousands of parallels for the individual rules.

In this case we landed on the solution of separating the text from the parallels.

https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-bu-pm?view=normal

I think that works pretty well. We should probably expand this concept to other text such as the Adhikaranasamathas. What do you think?

1 Like

Just out of curiosity, why didn’t you reuse the concept of a “partial parallel”?

I really think anything is fine as long as it’s clearly labeled. But having cards that look like all the other cards saying there is no root text available doesn’t make sense.

The Patimokkhas are kind of a different case since they don’t really exist as their own text, do they?

They do on SC. We have them as independent texts.

1 Like

It even looks as if we had German translations of them, both the monks’ and the nuns’ Patimokkha!

But if you click the link, all you get to see is a blank page. But I could see the root text.

2 Likes