Author: Dominik Wujastyk

Candraṭa was a Sanskrit author on medical topics who lived in the period 900-1050 CE (Meulenbeld HIML IIA, 122-125). He is perhaps best known for writing a commentary on his father Tīsaṭa’s treatise, Cikitsākalikā. But Candraṭa wrote several other works, and of most relevance to our project is his “Editorial Corrections to the Suśruta text”…

We are delighted to announce the publication of this project’s first book: Wujastyk, Dominik, Jason Birch, Andrey Klebanov, Madhu K. Parameswaran, Madhusudan Rimal, Deepro Chakraborty, Harshal Bhatt, Vandana Lele, and Paras Mehta. 2023. On the Plastic Surgery of the Ears and Nose. The Nepalese Version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1203. The…

I am pleased to report that a major project milestone has been reached. Last week we completed the transcription of all three Nepalese manuscripts of the Suśrutasaṃhitā that form the basis of our project. All files have been uploaded to GitHub, and a “version release” of the files has been issued, version 3.0. This has…

I asked BAIChat, “In textual criticism, what are the theoretical problems surrounding the issue of and “original” text.” The issue of the original text is a central theoretical problem in textual criticism, and it raises several complex issues. Firstly, the concept of an “original” text assumes that there was a single, definitive version of the…

I am very pleased to announce that today that project members have completed the transcription of the Nidānasthāna from MS NAK 1-1079.  That means we have transcribed all the evidence we have from manuscripts K, N, and H for the Nidānasthāna. The transcribing situation now is as follows: Well done everyone! Full details by adhyāya…

I asked the AI “Hugging Chat” the following question:

In a post yesterday, the developer of ChrysoCollate announced an upgrade to the free collation program ChrysoCollate. This is an interesting alternative to Saktumiva, though it has none of the special Indological features that make Saktumiva so powerful and still the first choice for collating and editing Indian manuscripts. Note specifically that ChrysoCollate requires you…

Attentive followers of the Suśruta Project will recall the project publication that focussed on interpreting the writing of छ by early Nepalese scribes . Our project members are currently debating a similar issue about the letters श and स specifically in the handwriting of the scribe of MS Kathmandu NAK 1-1079 (siglum N). This manuscript…

A few days ago I became aware of the program Upscaler. This is, “a free, open source app that leverages the power of artificial intelligence to upscale image quality.” I tried it out on a fuzzy manuscript image from MS Kathmandu NAK 1-1079, and I think the result is extremely promising. You may think that…