Comparing Sanskrit Texts for Critical Editions: the sequences move problem

International audienceA critical edition takes into account various versions of the same text in order to show the differences between two distinct versions, in terms of words that have been missing, changed, omitted or displaced. Traditionally, Sanskrit is written without spaces between words, and the word order can be changed without altering the meaning of a sentence. This paper describes the characteristics which make Sanskrit text comparisons a specific matter. It presents two different methods for comparing Sanskrit texts, which can be used to develop a computer assisted critical edition. The first one method uses the L.C.S., while the second one uses the global alignment algorithm. Comparing them, we see that the second method provides better results, but that neither of these methods can detect when a word or a sentence fragment has been moved. We then present a method based on N-gram that can detect such a movement when it is not too far from its original location. We will see how the method behaves on several examples and look for future possible developments

Construction d'arbres à partir de relations d'intermédiarité, application au stemma codicum

Dans cet article, nous allons modéliser la relation ternaire d’intermédiarité dans le cadre de l’édition critique de texte. L’éditeur doit essayer de reconstituer au mieux, à partir des manuscrits préservés, le manuscrit original tel que l’auteur l’a écrit. Le corpus est constitué de manuscrits copiés les uns sur les autres. Une des méthodes utilisées consiste à élaborer un arbre de filiation des manuscrits restants, appelé le stemma codicum Nous proposons de construire cet arbre à partir des relations d’intermédiarité entre les manuscrits : Un manuscrit B est entre les manuscrits A et C si le manuscrit C a été copié à partir du manuscrit B et que lui-même a été copié sur le manuscrit A.In this paper, we model the ternary betweenness relation within the framework of the critical edition of texts. The editor must try to reconstruct as well as possible, starting from the various preserved manuscripts, the original manuscript as the author wrote it. The corpus is made up of many manuscripts which are copied from one another. To do so, it appears interesting to draw up a family tree of these manuscripts called stemma codicum. A manuscript B is between the manuscripts A and C, i.e. the manuscript C was copied starting from the manuscript B which itself was copied from A. This is this concept of betweenness by copy act which one wishes to model

The Skandapurāṇa III

Skandapurāṇa III presents a critical edition of the Vindhyavāsinī Cycle (Adhyāyas 34.1-61, 53-69) from the Skandapurāṇa , with an introduction and annotated English synopsis.The work is currently only available in print as an exact reprint done in a smaller book size (15.5 x 23.5 cm) than the first printrun.; Readership: All interested in Purana literature, early Saivism, Hindu mythology, Hinduism in general, and especially the history of goddess worship; and also some interested in editing the Sanskrit literature

Amulets and talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in context: transmission, efficacy and collections

bookHorizon 2020(H2020)683194Middle Eastern Studie

A study of the early Renaissance Sibyl cycles in the art of Northern and Central Italy

Sibyl cycles in Northern and Central Italy, in the Early Renaissance. Previous published scholarship listed twenty-two sites. I now know of forty. Twenty-three of these may be considered Early Renaissance works of art and are the subject of this study. This study is not primarily engaged with history of Art but with the history of Ideas. That is, it is not a study of the painters. their methods and status but rather with the study of the development of the genre. its textual sources, the content of the inscribed oracles. the development of the pictorial conventions and symbolism. the transmission of these and the cultural significance of the genre. The dissertation is concerned with artistic styles and techniques only in so far as they illuminate the pictorial origin of the works and their iconographic significance in terms of the ideas conveyed. It describes and defines regional sub-genres. each with clear rules and conventions. These have not previously been identified and no comprehensive national conspectus exists. Structure of the Dissertation The dissertation is in three parts. The first part addresses the nature and origin of Sibyls (who and what they were) and their significance in cultural history until the Renaissance. Part Two is concerned with the origins and transmission of text and iconographic conventions in the Renaissance Sibyl cyeles. Pari three is a catalogue and survey of each Sibyl cycle site in Central and Northern Italy, along with a comprehensive photographic record. Great destruction of some cycles has taken place since the 1960s and the compilation of a complete photographic record is urgent and a significant aim of the present work. There are few published coloured photographs of the full cycles. none complete except for Siena. This dissertation is wide in scope and is in large part a catalogue and survey of all known Italian Sibyl cycles. Because of the limitations of a Doctoral dissertation. at times the transition from one site to another may appear abrupt and disjunct. Nonetheless, the structure is logical and careful. Sites are arranged chronologically, according to genre. The reader is directed to the detailed table of contents, if a review of structure and order be required. Research Method The method of research was to form a comprehensive list of Sibyl sites in Italy by consulting published English and Continental books. journals and locally produced historical papers as well as word of mouth advice in Italy. I visited all the sites and made a photographic record. Origin and transmission of text was established by consulting contemporary manuscripts that either specify the oracle text or describe the original Orsini. and other, frescos. These manuscripts are widely scattered in Europe and difficult of access so, where possible, a significant example of each kind of manuscript is reproduced in photographs or photocopy, transcribed and translated in the Appendices to the dissertation

Plant breeding and farmer participation

This book complements the traditional approach to plant breeding by addressing a number of issue specifically related to the participation of farmers in a plant breeding programme, and provides a comprehensive description and assessment of the use of participatory plant breeding in developing countries. It is aimed at plant breeders, social scientists, students and practitioners interested in learning more about its use, with the hope that they all will find a common ground to discuss ways in which plant breeding can be beneficial to all and can contribute to alleviate poverty

Putting Chinese natural knowledge to work in an eighteenth-century Swiss canton: the case of Dr Laurent Garcin

Symposium: S048 - Putting Chinese natural knowledge to work in the long eighteenth centuryThis paper takes as a case study the experience of the eighteenth-century Swiss physician, Laurent Garcin (1683-1752), with Chinese medical and pharmacological knowledge. A Neuchâtel bourgeois of Huguenot origin, who studied in Leiden with Hermann Boerhaave, Garcin spent nine years (1720-1729) in South and Southeast Asia as a surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Upon his return to Neuchâtel in 1739 he became primus inter pares in the small local community of physician-botanists, introducing them to the artificial sexual system of classification. He practiced medicine, incorporating treatments acquired during his travels. taught botany, collected rare plants for major botanical gardens, and contributed to the Journal Helvetique on a range of topics; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, where two of his papers were read in translation and published in the Philosophical Transactions; one of these concerned the mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), leading Linnaeus to name the genus Garcinia after Garcin. He was likewise consulted as an expert on the East Indies, exotic flora, and medicines, and contributed to important publications on these topics. During his time with the Dutch East India Company Garcin encountered Chinese medical practitioners whose work he evaluated favourably as being on a par with that of the Brahmin physicians, whom he particularly esteemed. Yet Garcin never went to China, basing his entire experience of Chinese medical practice on what he witnessed in the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia (the ‘East Indies’). This case demonstrates that there were myriad routes to Europeans developing an understanding of Chinese natural knowledge; the Chinese diaspora also afforded a valuable opportunity for comparisons of its knowledge and practice with other non-European bodies of medical and natural (e.g. pharmacological) knowledge.postprin

Painting in Stone: The Symbolism of Colored Marbles in the Visual Arts and Literature from Antiquity until the Enlightenment

Colored marble has been used throughout the Mediterranean as a building material, architectural veneer, sculptural material, even a support for painting since at least the second century BC. This thesis examines the poetics and symbolism of marbles, as a medium more than a material, over many centuries along three predominant lines: as images of substance according to a pre-modern concept of matter and pre-modern notions of geology; marble's apparent ability to bear light due to its polish and occasional translucency; and the longue durée that colored marbles constituted a form of natural (hence divine) painting. The use of marble in architecture and sculpture, as well as its depiction in painting and its description in literature, is examined from the Augustan era up untnil the close of the seventeenth century. Examples range from Durham to Samarra, from Ottoman folklore to popular piety in Florida, from Etruscan tomb painting to installation art, but key monuments like Hagia Sophia and the Cornaro Chapel offer case studies for in-depth analysis