recension

noun

1. A census, an enumeration, a review, a survey.

   “The recenſion of the inhabitants is conſidered, firſt, 'with reſpect to the general population, and to the local diſtribution of them into counties, towns, boroughs, villages, and pariſhes.' Among the conveniences expected from ſuch an annual recenſion, it is obſerved, that 'one might ſee what counties, towns, or pariſhes, diſpeopled faſteſt, or made a contrary progreſs.[…]'”

2. A critical revision of a text.

   “Of Theon of Alexandria, there remain a recension of Euclid's Elements, Scholia on Aratus, and a Commentary on the Syntaxis of Ptolemy.”

   “That this text is evidently a more antient recension of the same Syriac Gospel of St. Matthew, which, so far as we have the means of tracing it, appears to have been always in use in the Syriac canon, and that the variations in the subsequent recension, called the Peshito, have arisen from comparison with the Greek, by which it has been modified and brought in many places into closer conformity with the Greek; […]”

   “And so in different recensions, different poems will appear in different places.”

   “Since the 1895 text edition of Bensly–James, it has been recognized that each of the three parts of the 2 Esdras corpus exists in two distinct textual recensions. In each work, the two recensions divide along the lines of the same manuscripts: mss S and A consistently manifest a recension labeled by James the 'French', while the remaining mss CMNEVL show a recension that James called the 'Spanish'.”

3. A text established by critical revision.

   “The Śatapatha-Bráhmaṇa has been commented in the Mádhyaṃdina recension by Harisvámin and Sáyaṇa; but their commentaries are so far extant only in a fragmentary form. The Vṛihad-Áraṇyaka has been explained by Dviveda Gan̄ga (of Gujarát); and in the Káṇva recension by Śaṃkara, to whose commentary a number of other works by his pupils, &c., attach themselves.”

4. A family of manuscripts which share similar traits; the variety of a language which is used in such manuscripts.

   “The existence of two major literary centres in the First Bulgarian Empire led to the emergence of two recensions of Old Church Slavonic: the Bulgarian Recension and the Macedonian Recension.”

   “The Russian recension of Old Church Slavonic emerged after the 10th century and was characterized by the substitution of /u/ for the nasal sound /õ/.”

   “As the Hebrew manuscripts which have been in use since the eleventh century have all been corrected according to some particular recension or edition, they have from this circumstance been classed into Families, according to the country where such recension has obtained. These families or recensions are three or four in number, […]”