The Text Encoding Initiative’s Guidelines and recommendations were, for a large part, developed around the notions of European and American textual scholarship concerned with texts produced in the same cultural context. Naturally, this type of work is what the Guidelines fit best. In dealing with literary productions from other cultural environments, one finds that some of these notions have to be revised: Apparently, clear concepts, for example what a quotation or a title is, can become difficult to explain.

I would like to focus on how some notions have to be changed when working with Sanskrit philosophical texts, a sub-genre of the vast field of Sanskrit literature that the TEI Guidelines have only recently been started to be applied to. In this genre, authors often write extensive com- mentaries on a previous text, citing a passage, phrase, or only a word, and then explaining and discussing it. These commentaries might themselves be commented upon, and so on, so that we can find several layers of commentaries around a central statement. The encoding and critical editing of these types of texts is not well covered by the TEI Guidelines, and there is a need for discussion. I hope a presentation of the main decisions and considerations made so far in a project that is still work in progress can start such a discussion.