Author: Dominik Wujastyk

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…

In our translation of selected chapters of the Suśrutasaṃhitā we are doing a lot of work on the names of Sanskrit plants. We want to present this simply for the reader, using common English plant names. But at the same time we want to make some of the complexity of our referencing and decison-making available…

Vitus Angermeier, a project associate, has recently published a blog post on his own project website that explores the Nepalese version’s variant readings on the topic of epidemic disease. It is entitled, “Epidemics in Suśruta or: Why critical editions matter. An example from Ayurveda, Suśrutasaṃhitā.” See the whole post at https://epidemics.univie.ac.at/epidemics-in-susruta/ and the related conference…

Today we completed the transcription of MS Kathmandu KL 699’s text of the Suśrutasaṃhitā! There is more to do – always. We have the Sauśrutanighaṇṭu yet to do, but that is not very long compared to the text of the main work. Work on the transcription of MSS NAK 5-333 and 1-1079 is well-advanced. And…

We are all working very hard on transcribing manuscript data for this project and we’re making great progress. We are using tools like Saktumiva to manipulate that data in ways that produce the intellectual results we seek. But the data itself is probably the most valuable outcome of this project at this point. It is…