Building a stemmas with Paup v4.0 software: the case of eight text variants of Ngon chi thi tap by Phung Khac Khoan

Abstract

The inconsistency of the eight variants of Ngon chi thi tap by Phung Khac Khoan, (namely VHv. 1951, VHv. 1442, VHb. 264,  A. 555, A. 1364, A. 431, VHv. 2163 and R 7) and the lack of copying information do not provide us with knowledge to construct a transmission diagram of variants. This study investigates the following research question: Could we construct a stemma which represents close relations among its variants? The theoretical foundation of New-Stemmatics and the support of PAUP software help us address this question. Namely, 8 variants could be categorised into 4 groups: Group 1 including VHv. 1442, A. 555 and VHv. 2163, Group 2 including VHb. 264 and A. 431, Group 3 including A. 1364 and R 7, and Group 4 – special group having only one variant of VHv.1951. Based on this stemma and the distance among the variants we selected three variants to be used in collation of textual criticism: VHv.1951, VHv.1442 and A.1364.