text editing; philology; Buddhist literature; Ur-text; Biblical text criticism
摘要
The works attributed to Homer, folktales, Rabbinic literature and Buddhist scriptures share the feature that they all lack an Ur-text, an originary core. How are we to understand the nature of such literature, and how are we to edit it in a fashion that does not impose a unitary perspective onto what is inherently diverse and fluid? The ERC-funded Open Philology project is building a digital environment within which to edit Buddhist scriptures. This paper introduces the problem of fluid texts, sketches how reflections on Rabbinic and Biblical literature shed light on it, and outlines the approach being taken by our team to our multilingual corpora of Buddhist materials.
