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WEB PORTAL OF AYURVEDA MANUSCRIPTOLOGY
National Institute of Ayurveda
(Deemed To be University)
Ministry of AYUSH,
Govt. of India

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Textual Criticism:
Textual Criticism
  1. Higher criticism : is a branch of literary criticism that investigates the origins of ancient text in order to understand "the world behind the text".
  2. The primary goal of this criticism is to ascertain the text's primitive or original meaning in its original historical context and its literal sense or sensus literalis historicus.
  3. The secondary goal seeks to establish a reconstruction of the historical situation of the author and recipients of the text. This may be accomplished by reconstructing the true nature of the events which the text describes.
  4. An ancient text may also serve as a document, record or source for reconstructing the ancient past which may also serve as a chief interest to the historical critic
Methods
  1. Historical-critical methods are the specific procedures used to examine the text’s historical origins, such as:
  2. the time,
    1. the place in which the text was written,
    2. its sources,
    3. the events,
    4. dates,
    5. persons,
    6. places,
    7. things, and
    8. customs that are mentioned or implied in the text
Lower Criticism
  1. Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship,philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of transcription errors in texts, both manuscripts and printed books.
  2. Ancient scribes made alterations when copying manuscripts by hand.
  3. Given a manuscript copy, several or many copies, but not the original document, the textual critic might seek to reconstruct the original text (the archetype or autograph) as closely as possible.
  4. The same processes can be used to attempt to reconstruct intermediate versions, or recensions, of a document's transcription history.
  5. The ultimate objective of the textual critic's work is the production of a "critical edition" containing a text most closely approximating the original.