CAE — Cappeller Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1891)

Chapter authored per Decision 29 Tier B. Position 6 in the atlas ordering — the first systematic typographic implementation of the lexicographer-only hedge that MW 1899 would scale and tag.

Trust Block

• Evidence: CDSL v02 cae.txt, src/data/cross-dict.json, and linked dictionary-profile/audit notes.
• Limitations: narrative atlas profile; counts summarize committed/generated artifacts and do not replace source edition inspection.
• Validation: checked by npm run build; chapter consistency is tracked in _consistency_audit.
• Owner repo: csl-atlas.
• Next use: use this dictionary profile as context, then open source-linked records or compare the lemma in Reader Lookup.

1. Overview

Carl Cappeller's A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Based Upon the St. Petersburg Lexicons, published Strassburg 1891 by Karl J. Trübner. A single-volume reduction of PWG + PWK aimed at English-reading Sanskritists, intended as a practical reference rather than a research instrument. Cappeller went on to co-edit MW 1899 (with Ernst Leumann), making the lineage from CAE 1891's typographic asterisk to MW 1899's tagged <ls>L.</ls> direct rather than merely parallel. CAE's record count (40,069) is close to a tenth of MW's (286,561) — it is deliberately compact, omitting most of MW's encyclopedic apparatus and all of PWG's named-kosha citations.

2. Structural features (Tier B: in place of profile table)

CAE's digitisation carries no <ls> tags at all — Cappeller's source apparatus is exclusively typographic. The conventional 18-block profile is therefore degenerate (the citation column is empty). The structural features that are present:

Block-presence by name (cross-dict-common subset):

3. Citation strategy (or lack of tagged apparatus)

CAE's digitisation carries zero <ls> tags — the Cologne workflow chose not to extract Cappeller's typographic markers as <ls> citations because they are not source citations in the named-work sense. The result: the cross-dict comparison sees CAE as a "no apparatus" dictionary, but the print volume does carry an active source-discipline — it is simply typographic rather than tagged. The two markers, from Cappeller's own preface (verbatim, analysis/LS_HEDGE_CHECK.md §"Print-preface read"):

"* denotes a word taught only by grammarians or lexicographers." "† denotes a word which occurs only in a translation from Prakrit." ("†...†" combines both.)

And the principle: "On the whole, it offers only authenticated matter, i.e. such words…as are actually found in the works of Sanskrit writers."

3a. Typography & precedent — the asterisk as systematic lexicographer hedge

This is the central CAE finding and the reason CAE sits at position 6 in the Decision 29 ordering.

Cappeller's * is semantically the exact analogue of MW 1899's <ls>L.</ls>: both mark words attested only in indigenous Sanskrit lexicons (Amarakośa, Hemacandra, Medinīkośa, Halāyudha, etc.) and not in literary works. The lineage is direct in three senses:

1. Cappeller co-edited MW 1899 (with Leumann), so the convention travelled with the editor from Strassburg to Oxford.
2. The 8-year gap (1891 → 1899) is short enough that the typographic-to-tagged transition happens in one editorial career.
3. The semantic content is identical — the asterisk means in CAE 1891 what <ls>L.</ls> means in MW 1899.

Three-stage hedge lineage (per DOUBTS D21 resolution)

CAE 1891 is the systematic-typographic node — the first dictionary in the European-Sanskrit lineage to apply the lexicographer-only mark at a scale that makes it a structural feature of every reading rather than an occasional editorial aside. Without CAE, MW 1899's 40,212-instance apparatus would have no methodological precedent; without MW 1899, CAE's asterisk would be a curiosity rather than a tool.

Note on the dagger †

Cappeller's dagger marks a different phenomenon (Prakrit-translation-only attestation) and has no MW-1899 successor — MW does not have a Prakrit-attestation tag. The dagger belongs to the same general typographic family as the asterisk but is a content-specific marker, not a generalisable hedge.

5. Lineage statement

CAE occupies the typographic-precedent position in the European-Sanskrit-lexicography lineage. It draws on PWG 1855–75 and PWK 1879–89 for its lexical material (the subtitle is explicit: "Based Upon the St. Petersburg Lexicons") and on MW 1872 for the concept of the lexicographer-only mark (which MW had declared in his preface but not systematically implemented). It synthesises both into a single-volume work that, for the first time, applies the mark at scale. Its direct successor is MW 1899 — which preserves the convention but promotes it from typographic * to tagged <ls>L.</ls>, increasing scale ~30-fold and integrating it with the named-source citation apparatus.

Full lineage in CAE/DATA_DICTIONARY.md (note: as of 2026-05-27 the CAE DATA_DICTIONARY does not document the asterisk/dagger conventions; this is a tracked editorial gap, LS_HEDGE_CHECK.md §"Print-preface read").

6. Cross-references — divergence/convergence with adjacent chapters

7. Decisions log

• No conventional profile table (Tier B) — CAE has 0 <ls> tags, so the cite-rate column would be all-zero. Replaced §2 with a "structural features" table.
• §3a typography section is mandatory per Decision 29 Tier B; the precedent finding from D21 is the chapter's centre.
• Three-stage lineage rendered per D21 resolution.
• CAE dagger explicitly distinguished from MW's hedge — the dagger marks Prakrit-translation-only attestation, not lexicographer-only; it has no MW successor.
• CAE's missing DATA_DICTIONARY documentation of the asterisk/dagger is named as an editorial gap and a future issue.
• D19 effect-size threshold: numerical claims (1,370 asterisks, 903 daggers, 0 <ls> tags) are large effects.

8. Data dictionary + reproducibility manifest

• DATA_DICTIONARY.md — full tag inventory (note: asterisk/dagger conventions are not yet documented; tracked as editorial gap)
• Source file: csl-orig/v02/cae/cae.txt
• Block-detector script: figures/scripts/export_data.py
• Cross-dict aggregate JSON: src/data/cross-dict.json (includes CAE block matrix data)
• License: CC-BY-SA-4.0

See also (tools)

• Cross-dictionary comparison — CAE alongside all 8 other CDSL dicts
• Lineage Sankey — Cappeller's typographic asterisk → MW's tagged hedge
• LS_HEDGE_CHECK.md — full hedge analysis including the Cappeller preface read

Source: CDSL cae.txt 2026-05-23 · MWS docs-pass commit reflects audit pipeline as of 2026-05-27 · CC-BY-SA-4.0