In texts, through thoughts, with pleasure

This is a: cocktail, written by Birgit Kellner 792 days ago.
Keywords: philology

“The number of available witnesses is small, but their character is varied.”

As I was just typing this sentence, my beloved one happened to glance over my shoulder. “Ah, reads like a police report”, he remarked, dryly.

Well, in fact I had just been describing the manuscript situation of Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika. But the stylistic similarity to police language is, well, suspicious.

I guess from today, whenever I use one particularly troublesome manuscript, I’ll always think of it as that notoriously unreliable witness who shows up drunk to questioning, and keeps telling conflicting stories about what really happened.

[But what, I wonder, would in this metaphor be the actual crime ?]