Here you find a description of the transcriptions of the Dhammapada, the Text-Fabric model in general, and the node types, features of the Dhammapada corpus in particular.
See also
The corpus consists of a text in Pāli and a Latin translation of the text.
The main subdivision is in 26 units named vaggas, which are themselves divided
into stanzas. There are 423 stanzas in the whole work and they are numbered across the vaggas
from 1 to 423. These numbers are coded in the feature n.
The original text and its translation are linked stanza-wise.
During conversion we have made a finer division in clauses and sentences.
Sentences are terminated by . and ?,
also by - when it is not attached to a word.
; and : act as clause terminators.
Clauses are subdivided in words, and words consist of non-letters-before, letters of the proper word, and non-letters-after.
Sentence and clauses sometimes cross stanza boundaries, but never
vagga boundaries.
That is why we number sentences and clauses by their sequence number within their
vaggas, again in feature n.
Most words are separated by spaces, but we also make word divisions in strings like
(qui-)que.
In the Latin text we encounter ( ): this is material added for clarity by
Fausbøll (the author of the translation).
We code it in the feature clarity, see below.
In the Pāli text we also encounter [ ]: this is material that is not completely certain.
We code it in the feature uncertain, see below.
In both texts there is quoted material. We normalize the quotes to the ASCII double quote
", and we mark words in a quotation by means of the feature quote.
There is (very little) material outside stanzas: one case of interstanza material,
and several cases at the start and end of vaggas.
We mark this material with the feature extrastanza.
The stanza number for extra stanza material is the stanza number of the nearest stanza in the
same vagga, increased by 1000. So a 4-digit stanza number is by definition not a real stanza.
And a 3-digit stanza is always a real stanza.
Sentences, clauses and words either belong to the Pāli original or to the Latin
translation. The feature trans codes which is the case, see below.
Mind the twins
The fact that stanzas contain both the original and the translation has these consequences:
- When you count the words inside a stanza, you add up the Pāli words and the Latin words. Likewise for sentences and clauses.
- If you want to count only words, clauses, sentences of one text type,
use the
transfeature to distinguish between them. - If you count the words within sentences or clauses, you count the words of one text type only.
The Text-Fabric model views the text as a series of atomic units, called slots. In this corpus words are the slots.
On top of that, more complex textual objects can be represented as nodes. In this corpus we have node types for:
word, clause, sentence, stanza, vagga.
The type of every node is given by the feature
otype.
Every node is linked to a subset of slots by
oslots.
Nodes can be annotated with features. Relations between nodes can be annotated with edge features. See the table below.
Text-Fabric supports up to three customisable section levels. In this corpus we use only two: vagga and stanza.
(Keep this under your pillow)
When we say that a feature is absent for a node, we mean that the node has no value
for the feature. For example, if the feature trans is absent for node n, then
F.trans.v(n) results in the Python value None, not the string 'None'.
In queries, you can test for absence by means of #:
word trans#
gives all lines where the feature trans is absent (these are all the Pāli words).
See also search templates under Value specifications.
Node type word
Basic unit containing a word plus attached non-word stuff such as punctuation,
or a text-critical sign like ( ) [ ].
| feature | values | description |
|---|---|---|
pali |
manasā |
the real word letters of a Pāli word |
latin |
mente |
the real word letters of a Latin word |
palipre |
[ |
immediately preceding non-word characters of a Pāli word |
latinpre |
( |
immediately preceding non-word characters of a Latin word |
palipost |
, |
non-word characters after of a Pāli word, including white-space |
latinpost |
; |
non-word characters after of a Latin word, including white-spaced |
extrastanza |
1 |
indicates the word is outside a stanza |
quote |
1 |
indicates the word is inside a quotation |
uncertain |
1 |
Pāli only: indicates the word is uncertain (somewhere inside a [ ] pair |
clarity |
1 |
Latin only: indicates the word is added for clarity (somewhere inside a ( ) pair |
trans |
1 |
indicates the word belongs to the Latin translation, when absent it is in the Pāli original |
Node type clause
Subdivision of a containing sentence.
| feature | values | description |
|---|---|---|
n |
1 2 |
sequence number of a clause within its vagga |
trans |
1 |
indicates the word belongs to the Latin translation, when absent it is in the Pāli original |
Node type sentence
Subdivision of a containing vagga.
| feature | values | description |
|---|---|---|
n |
1 2 |
sequence number of a sentence within its vagga |
trans |
1 |
indicates the word belongs to the Latin translation, when absent it is in the Pāli original |
Node type stanza
Section level 2.
Subdivision of a containing vagga.
| feature | values | description |
|---|---|---|
n |
1 2 |
sequence number of a stanza within the whole work |
Node type vagga
Section level 1.
Subdivision of the whole work.
| feature | values | description |
|---|---|---|
n |
1 2 |
sequence number of a vagga within the whole work |
The following text formats are defined (you can also list them with T.formats).
| format | description |
|---|---|
text-orig-full |
the full text of all words, Pāli and Latin |
text-pali-full |
the full text of all Pāli words and leaves Latin words empty |
text-latin-full |
the full text of all Latin words and leaves Pāli words empty |
layout-orig-full |
as text-orig-full but with special layout for quote, uncertain, clarity, etc. |
layout-pali-full |
as text-pali-full but with special layout for quote, uncertain, clarity, etc. |
layout-latin-full |
as text-latin-full but with special layout for quote, uncertain, clarity, etc. |
The formats with text result in strings that are plain text, without additional formatting.
The formats with layout result in pieces HTML with CSS-styles;
the richness of layout enables us to code more information
in the plain representation, e.g. blurry characters when words are uncertain.
We also use different colours for Pali and Latin.