Thursday, January 26, 2012

colophons, names of text portions in Sanskrit manuscripts

I believe that David Pingree introduced the term "post-colophon" into Indian manuscript studies when he wrote his catalogue of the Bodleian Chandra Shum Shere jyotiṣa collection.

Am I right that nobody outside Indological circles (and those influenced by indologists in the last few decades) uses the term "post-colophon"?

Here's a grid of usages:

Key: Pingree (various catalogues, starting 1984)
Tripathi: C. Tripathi, Cat. of Jaina MSS at Strasbourg
Wikipedia: see here and links.
X: no special term


Description      Pingree       Tripathi         Wikipedia (and non-indologists)
------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Final verse
of text                       X                     X              explicit

iti...samāptam        colophon      colophon       X (or colophon?)


saṃvat phrase       post-            Scribal           colophon

                               colophon       Remarks

after saṃvat

phrase                    X                  post-             X
                                                     colophon


 
Pratapaditya Pal uses "post-colophon" in his 1978 Arts of Nepal book
(http://tinyurl.com/37n8f2z), in the same sense as Pingree.  Perhaps
that's where David got it?