Theos-Talk Archives (July 2006 Message tt00364)

Carlos on "the authentic edition of the 'Secret Doctrine' 
prepared by Boris de Zirkoff"....!!!!!!

Carlos writes:

=================================================
It was the Theosophy Co. which first re-published 
the original Secret Doctrine in 1925, thus starting 
the tendency to keep to original editions and to abandon
the "silently edited" and "adapted" editions promoted 
by Adyar.  Later on, by FINALLY adopting the AUTHENTIC
edition of the "Secret Doctrine" prepared by Boris de 
Zirkoff, the very Adyar TS abandoned the fancy and
illegitimate edition of the SD published by GRS Mead 
and Annie Besant in 1897. 
================================================

caps added.

I really wonder why Carlos praises "the authentic edition of 
the 'Secret Doctrine' prepared by Boris de Zirkoff".

He gives the impression that Adyar abandoned "silent
editing" by adopting the BdeZ "authentic" edition.

I have no idea what Carlos means by "authentic".

I suppose he has some definition in his mind.

But consider the following:

Boris de Zirkoff in fact "silently edited" the Collected
Writings edition of the Secret Doctrine first published by
Adyar TPH and later reprinted by Wheaton TPH.

In other words, Boris EDITED H.P.B.'s text changing spellings of
words, actually substituted "one word" for another one in many 
instances, etc. etc.  

Many examples have been given of these "editings" by Tony Maddock
of the Mahatma Letters Trust and also by the late Walter 
Carrithers.  Both Maddock and Carrithers have SEVERELY criticized 
Boris' editing.

This in fact constitutes SILENT EDITING.  That is, by looking
at the BdeZ edition of the SD, it is NOT possible to determine what
changes, etc. have actually been made in the text by Boris de 
Zirkoff.

In fact, one could aptly borrow a sentence from the Theosophy 
Company to describe Mr. de Zirkoff's edition of the SD:

"Its exact authenticity, however, cannot be determined without 
laborious comparison with the original."

And Carlos is apparently more than willing to approve of 
THIS "silent editing" with these significant words:

"the authentic edition of the 'Secret Doctrine' prepared by Boris de 
Zirkoff".  !!!!!

Now it is true that Boris warns the reader in the prefactory 
material to the new edition that this kind of silent editing has 
been done.

At least, this is a decided improvement over NO note in the 
Theosophy Company's edition of the VOICE to warn readers 
that "silent editing" has been done!!!

Daniel
http://hpb.cc