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In fact, both translating and editing are something most Indologists have learned in a pragmatic way through examples from within the field, and some have managed to become quite good at it. And even if this acknowledgement may deter the reader from continuing, in most cases this approach is sufficient. The reason is that many, perhaps most, decisions in textual criticism are made through selecting the “better reading”, a reading that is within the reach of the editor who knows the most about the author, his times, the literary conventions of his time and so forth, but not necessarily arrived at by the one who has read widely on textual criticism. There are, however, two reasons for combining theory and practice: first, not all texts can be treated with the pragmatic approach; and second, without background, we are unable to understand the wider implications of editorial decisions, or explain the method’s rationale when it is criticized from a theoretical angle.
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