Theos-Talk Archives (September 1998 Message tt00143)

There are a number of issues regarding the Boris de
Zirkoff edition of THE SECRET DOCTRINE. The most
important one that affects us, as theosophical students
with computer access, is one of copyright law.

The original SECRET DOCTRINE is in the public
domain, and any of up may computerize it and
do what we like to make it widely available. The
same is not true of Boris' edition, which is under
copyright by Theosophical Publishing House. We'll
all be dead of old age before it enters the public
domain.

As to the various smaller issues involved, and my
own vote/preference ...

* incomplete citations

  Should be corrected/filled in if the source
  document could be located and correctly identified.

* inaccurate quoting

  Should be corrected if the source document could
  be located and correctly identified.

* quotes in body text

  Should follow standard publishing convention,
  breaking out the quotes typographically in some
  manner, like in smaller type as in the Boris edition.

* inaccurate, inconsistent, out-of-date transliteration

  Should be corrected to follow standard scholarly
  conventions regarding Sanskrit and other foreign
  languages, if it's clear what the word is that is
  being corrected.

* pagination

  Should be flexible, with typographic control
  exercised by the reader as to font, point size,
  page layout, etc., but with end of page markers to
  show original pagination (e.g. after the last word
  of page 634 would be "[634]" in boldface).

* obsolete words

  Should be revised if there's no ambiguity over what
  the word is, like "milliard" being replaced with
  "billion".

While I agree with the practice of passing down what
we have been given unaltered, I'd say that what we've
been given is a living body of ideas, a form of knowledge
and understanding. To pass down these ideas unaltered
means that we keep our books readable, and sometimes
present the ideas in newer ways, supplementing the
source writings with books and articles of our own.

I don't consider the position on the printed page of
any particular word, nor the numerology of any
English word, as having anything but accidental
significance.

The tradition that we're passing down does not consist
of physical artifacts, including the facsimile image of
the pages of the original edition of THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The tradition is an accurate and spiritual-connected
understanding of the ideas that are contained therein,
ideas that can only be imperfectly contained on the
printed page.

There are places in THE SECRET DOCTRINE where it
goes so deep that we may be unable to follow the
author in our thought, and possibly misunderstand
what is being said. In our misunderstanding, if we
were correcting the text, we might make a change to
the words that loses the original, deep meaning.

This is certainly possible, but I'd say that there's
a spectrum of materials and depth to the writings,
and on the shallow end of that spectrum are obvious
mistakes that detract from the value of the work,
mistakes that can and should be corrected. Somewhere
towards the middle of the spectrum are words that
are less certain, words that we should probably leave
untouched. And on the far end of the spectrum are
what may be called sacred writings, words we can
puzzle over and contemplate, but which we may never
quite grasp in their entirety.

The three-volume edition of THE SECRET DOCTRINE
erred on the side of being overly liberal in changes,
by individuals that thought, perhaps, that they knew
better than HPB herself what was true about Theosophy.
Sticking to the facsimile edition errs, I think, on
the side of being overly conservative, and handicaps
the would-be student. The Boris edition comes in the
middle ground, as I see it, with judicious, well-informed
corrections of obvious errors, and useful supplemental
materials included. I'm happy with it for my personal
studies, although, because of copyright considerations,
I'd have to limit myself to the verbatim or facsimile
editions when quoting or reprinting portions of the
book.

-- Eldon