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Variant Readings

DPD Variants

DPD includes a dictionary of variant readings as found in various recensions of digital Pāḷi texts. This is a very niche tool, but will be appreciated by Pāḷi scholars and translators.

var var

  1. The headword is the primary reading found in the source text.
  2. Source is the source text in which the word is found
    • CST: Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipiṭaka (Myanmar)
    • BJT: Buddha Jayanti Tipiṭaka (Sri Lanka)
    • SYA: Syāmaraṭṭha 1927 Royal Edition (Thailand)
    • MST: Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka (Sutta Central)
  3. Book is the Tipiṭaka book in which the variant occurs.
  4. Context is the phrase in which the variants occur.
  5. Variant is the variant reading found in the inline notes or footnotes, and the text in which the variant occurs.

Origin of Variants

Variant readings are the differences in the spelling, wording, phrasing, or structure of the same text as found in different manuscripts, editions, or traditions. These variations have arisen due to a host of combining factors, including:

  • Different dialects prevalent in north India at the time of the Buddha
  • Natural, diachronic language change over time
  • Transmission by speakers of non Indo-Aryan languages
  • Ambiguities of memory and oral transmission
  • Corrections, grammatical normalization and Sanskritization
  • Orthographic ambiguities
  • Scribal errors
  • and many more

For more information, an excellent paper on the topic is Bryan Levman's paper entitled "Pāli Variants: A Typology (Part I)", published in the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies in 2024 (JOCBS 24: 71–143).

Extraction of Variant Readings

The source code to extract the variant readings can be found here on GitHub. The original issue detailing the problems of extracting variants is here.