LANMAN. — PALI BOOK-TITLES. 703 



should be Roman and not Italic (Cursivschrift). 61 The exponents 

 should be separated, each from its neighbors (but not from the group- 

 letter), by a comma (thus : Bl, e, 9)- 62 



Confusion of the designations in texts already issued. — In what 

 follows, the editions of the Pali Text Society 63 are intended, except in 

 the case of the Jataka and Vinaya. Some of the texts (Vv., Bu., Cr. ; 

 Dbs., Pug.) have no apparatus criticus and hence no sigla codicum. 



The principle underlying Fausboll's procedure in the Sutta-nipata 

 (1885) was expressly enunciated in 1886 by the editors of the D.cm. 

 (preface, p., xii), who say : We " give the Sinhalese tradition as our 

 text, and . . . add the Burmese readings in our notes. And it is to 

 make this perfectly clear and easy to the reader that we have adopted 

 the plan of naming the Sinhalese mss. not D., T., etc., but S d , S*, etc. 

 When we are able to quote mss. in Kambojan characters, we shall des- 

 ignate them on the same principle as K d , K fc , etc." 



The principle is absolutely correct ; but its enunciators or authors, 

 in using S instead of C for Cingalese, have applied it with such lack of 

 prevision and circumspection as largely to defeat their purpose. For 

 the results, see below, under Dlgha, etc. It is most amazing and unfor- 

 tunate that Fausboll's good example was not duly and generally heeded, 

 and that the principle j ust rehearsed was put into practice so badly. The 

 editors of Pali texts assuredly possess discernment enough to recognize 

 the excellence of Fausboll's procedure, and wisdom enough to follow it ; 

 but in this matter they have been simply heedless and have failed 

 to use those qualities. If scholars would uniformly adopt the sigla 

 here proposed, the economy and convenience and utility of them would 

 be very great, and would be surely recognized by all who tried them. 



To make this clear, it is worth while to show up the existing confu- 

 sion. This may be summarized as follows : 1. In some cases, the mss., 

 without any reference to the groups to which they belong, are desig- 

 nated by haphazard sigla, which convey no idea as to the origin of the 

 ms. or the alphabet in which it is written. These sigla are so arbitrary 



61 Fausboll's Sutta-nipata shows small italics used as exponents. 



62 I may say in this place (for lack of a better) : If the apparatus criticus 

 is given in the foot-notes, with reference-numbers corresponding to numbers 

 in the text above, then the reference-numbers at the foot (not in the text) may 

 well be set in a black-faced type, and they should certainly be set with columnar 

 alignment. 



63 I beg the reader not to think that I wish to detract in the smallest degree 

 from the very great merit of the services rendered to science by the Managing 

 Chairman of the Pali Text Society. Nothing could be farther from my wish. 

 My sole purpose is to show how hurtful the present lack of agreement and 

 system is, and to put an end to it. 



