Editorial Principles

In order to give the dated features of the languages in which the documents were written the full weight they deserve, the editorial approach adopted is one that seeks preferentially to reproduce texts as closely as possible rather than to normalize them. The observable variability in terms of orthography and grammar is respected as being an integral part of the language. All documents are treated as codices unici, even if in some cases certified copies are extant.

Editorial Symbols

[...]                              lost text

[?]                               illegible text

[रा]                              editorial addition

⟪ ⟫                                    scribal addition

Crossed-out text        scribal deletion

{...}                             editorial deletion

Display Modes

The xml files of the digital editions can be displayed in different modes.

Mode “Diplomatic”

The text as it appears in the original document is reproduced as faithfully as possible, including diacritic marks, such as the nukta (़); original line breaks; format features, such as the scriptura continua used in most documents; and graphical features, such as the middle dot (•) sporadically employed to mark word separation, or macrons and lines of various shapes, often used as placeholders or structuring elements.

Mode “Word breaks”

The text is displayed as it is in the “diplomatic” mode but with the introduction of word breaks.

Mode “Annotated edition”

The aim being to achieve a balance between readability and texts that remain as close to the original as possible, the editorial techniques that have been applied to the documents introduce minimally invasive normalizations and corrections.

Punctuation 

In order to make the editions and their relation to the translations more accessible for the reader, punctuation has been normalized. Middle dots represented in the diplomatic edition are dropped. The various types of macrons and lines are uniformly represented by “- - -”. Daṇḍas are introduced to mark the end of a sentence or a sentence-like syntactic unit. Hyphenation is introduced in cases where a single word runs over into the next line.

Orthography

The original spelling is largely retained. The only regularizations concern introducing a differentiation between ṣ and kh and between v and b on the basis of standard modern spellings, following the Nepālī Bṛhat Śabdakośa (Parājulī et al. 1995), regardless of whether or not these reflect actual differences in pronunciation at the time when the documents were written. The documents themselves mostly only use ṣ and v, and occasionally distinguish v from b by adding a nukta to the former. Such nuktas, along with others sporadically employed to distinguish ya from pa, are dropped.

In parts of the texts written in khasa-kurā, later known as Nepali, typical orthographic variants (cf. Riccardi 1971: 18-23) are not normalized. This especially concerns alternate ways to represent the i- and u-vowels (i alternates with ī or e, ya / yā with e, and u with ū; cf. Riccardi 1971: 18-19), sporadic non-standard visargas (cf. ibid.: 19), looseness and inconsistencies in the use of anusvāra, anunāsika and the class nasals  (cf. ibid.: 20), and further alternative spellings, such as k/g, kṣ/ch, j/y, ḍ/d/r, ṭ/t, r/l, and ś/s (cf. ibid.: 20-23).  

Uncertain readings and corrections are highlighted by dots under those portions of text and are additionally explained in pop-up windows.

Transliteration

If the display is shifted to Transliteration, daṇḍas appear as full stops. The text, be it noted, is transliterated rather than transcribed, so that a final or medial a is always retained regardless of whether it was actually pronounced or not. The same applies to all quotations of portions of text in the Abstract, Translation, Commentary, and Footnotes sections.