Talk:The Book of the Books, Vol 5

From The Sannyas Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Since this "book" was never published, there may be no reason to list it here in the wiki, ja? And even taken as real, it is out of step with the others in the series in that the others parallel The Dhammapada's overall structure, ie BotB's Vol 4 = Dhammapada's Series 4 and so on, while this one leaps ahead to encompass Series 9 and 10 (which it might well do if the rest of BotB's vols did two Series each but they don't.)

And if even taking that as real, then the dates are wrong, should be Feb 11 to Mar 4. Where did the info for this thing come from?

And probably the same for "Vol 6", which purports to cover Dhammapada's Series 11 & 12, though at least it gets the dates right. Maybe time to pull the plug on both? -- doofus-9 07:17, 20 December 2015 (UTC)


the info came from the CD-ROM : "The original tape and book title was "The Book of the Books, Vols 1 - 6". Later reissued as twelve volumes under the present title."

so i still like to keep them for completness sake.--Rudra (talk) 09:40, 20 December 2015 (UTC)


Okay. I see that the CD-ROM has that infobit repeated with each of the twelve volumes ("Series") of The Dhammapada. So BotB was once ("originally") planned to comprise all 12 vols of what became Dhammapada, each of its six vols having 20 or 23 discourses. But none of that ever happened. Zero. What we have in BotB's first four vols are already a change of plan. So if we were going to be complete with this thing, we should have two pages for each of the first four vols, ie The Book of the Books, Vol 1 and The Book of the Books, Vol 1 (2) and so on, with each of the new pages representing a phantom edition (the "Zeroth Edition" maybe) corresponding to two vols of Dhammapada. The four new vols 1 to 4 are surely no less real than 5 and 6.

And to be truly systematic about it, perhaps the "real" editions, ie those actually published, should be the ones designated by the (2)'s, then the ones representing two vols each would all be of the same form. (Sort of like the first six vols of Ashtavakra: Mahageeta (अष्‍टावक्र : महागीता) (series) under its two Bhag-numbering systems.) -- doofus-9 05:32, 21 December 2015 (UTC)


More questions arise about "First published as part of The Dhammapada and then as The Dhammapada, Vol 9 + The Dhammapada, Vol 10":

1. The phraseology suggests there have been two distinct publishing events, which can hardly be the case. especially since
2. The Dhammapada, Vol 9 and The Dhammapada, Vol 10 seem not to exist, being red-linked and all.

Probably they should be The Dhammapada, Series 9 and The Dhammapada, Series 10, but that still leaves us with the unlikely two apparent publishing events.

And The Book of the Books, Vol 6 has the same issues, (with "Vol 11" and "Vol 12") -- doofus-9 07:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)


A bit late (mustard after the meal, as we say), but here is the riddle of BotB. I see now in Shanta's original audio tapes that they were called "The Book of the Books I -- VI", each with 20 tapes/discourses (volume IV and V had 3 discourses more). So originally the books were planned as 6 volumes, each 20 chapters. But what happened was the publication of 4 volumes of BotB, with 10 discourses/chapters each.

And then later we got The Dhammapada, 12 volumes with 10 chapters each (Series 8 and 10 have 13 discourses). The re-mastered audio, and all MP3s, also have that naming-system. --Sugit (talk) 08:51, 6 February 2018 (UTC)