Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt00821)

Konstantin,

I wrote the following about the 1893 Edition of THE SECRET DOCTRINE:

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The Theosophy Company publishers tell us that the 1893 edition ...
was "marred by many thousands of alterations, some of them trivial,
some actual mutilations of the original text."

How many of these thousands of changes were "trivial" as
opposed to actual mutilations?
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You replied:

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I've heard this accusation for the first time around 10 years ago from
Dallas Tenbroek.  I asked him to show at least one change which 
affects actual meaning.  Nevertheless in all these years till his 
death I didn't receive from him any example.

I have found some alterations which improve English grammar and make
text more easily readable, and that's all. These alterations cannot be
compared with those in "Voice of Silence" to which you have shown.
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I have done some preliminary work on comparing THE KIND of changes 
that one finds in the 1893 ed. of the SD with the KIND of changes to 
be found in the Theosophy Co. ed. of the VOICE.

I find SAME kinds of changes in BOTH works.  For example, the 
changing of a smaller case letter to caps or vice 
versa.  "Corrections" of HPB's Sanskrit scholarship. etc.

I assume these kind of changes are the kinds of changes that the 
Theosophy Company publishers were labelling "trivial" when referring 
to SOME of the changes in the 1893 SD.  

[NOTE:  I do think that there are some serious changes in the 1893 SD 
that are not covered under "trivial" but I think that this also is 
true of the 1928 TC VOICE.]

We should have the SAME STANDARD for comparing the kinds and 
significance of the changes in both the 1893 SD and the 1928 TC VOICE.

Notice also that the Theosophy Company publishers state that the 1893 
SD is MARRED by all these changes.

So if we find SIMILAR changes in the TC  edition of the VOICE, then 
can we not also fairly conclude that this  ed. of the VOICE is also 
MARRED?

Again the TC publishers make a remark about one edition of the SD 
which I quote below:

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

The gist of this statement gets to the one of the CORE ISSUES I am 
addressing:

The EXACT AUTHENTICITY of both the 1893 SD and the 1928 TC VOICE 
cannot be determined without LABORIOUS COMPARISON with the originals 
of both the SD and the VOICE.

Therefore most readers and students who want to read both the SD and 
the VOICE as they were originally published and authorized by Madame 
Blavatsky herself would do well to read photographic facsimiles of 
the originals. 

TC and TUP publish photographic facsimiles of the 1888 SD.

Kessinger is the only publisher that I know that actually publishes a 
photographic facsimile of the 1889 VOICE.

See the Kessinger facsimile at:  http://tinyurl.com/nrthz

Daniel
http://hpb.cc