Dear Ven. Sujato, Piya and friends,

Bhante:

thank you for your message. You have provided many excellent ideas, a
few of which I have been experimenting on Tipitaka.net for a while.
Over the past few months, several members have also written about
possible IT projects of all sorts. I have been reading with interest,
but can't really contribute in the discussion as I was busy with my
studies. Studies is over now, and I am currently seeking permanent
employment in Australia. In the meanwhile, I have looking back at the
messages in the archive at the awesome ideas that have been presented.

The ideas you have suggested summed up into a collaborative web
project, and it is technically viable. However, it will require a bit
of planning, as well as design and development, to accomplish what
you would like to do. Nevertheless, such a community-based and
content-driven system is available. In fact, there are several of
these content management systems (CMS's) available, and many are
free! Again, they may not be exactly what is needed, and will require
not only tailoring, but possibly a high-level of design and
development too. Also available are web database systems, and portal
systems, forum systems and wiki systems based on those web databases,
the most popular being mySQL, a web-based RDBMS. On top of that.
there are also many options to deliver contents to web-users.

The system you have suggested will have a certain impact on the way
people learn Buddhism in the future. There will be several hurdles to
clear. One is the issue of presenting Pali characters, and possibly
Sanskrit, CJK, Southeast Asian scripts, and Tibetan characters. The
rest will be the design of the site, which will basically be mainly
programming issues at the start. Even so, I believe such a project is
worth undertaking.


metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Bhante Sujato wrote:


The idea is to provide a one-stop-shop for those interested to pursue
study of early Buddhism along comparative and historical lines.

'Early Buddhism' means, generally speaking, the first 500 years, and
would thus include Sutta (Agama/Nikaya), Vinaya, and Abhidhamma
material. Later material would not be excluded, especially when it
throws light on the early period. But the main focus of interest
would be the shared, pre-sectarian material in the Nikayas/Agamas and
Vinayas.

The site will include its own content, and will also co-ordinate
content found elsewhere on the net. Additionally we hope to promote
feedback, utilizing some of the amazing talents of people such as on
this yahoogroup, and actually generate new content throught the site.

Some of the things we want to do will be quite straightforward. For
example, one section would be for essays on early Buddhism. These can
just be put there as pdf files for anyone to read.

Another section would be for translations. We would not wish to
duplicate efforts done elsewhere, so would not emphasize putting
translations from Pali. The main aim would be to encourage
translations of early materials from Chinese, Skt, and Tibetan.

A further section would be devoted to original texts. Again, we would
not put up Pali or Chinese texts (except in special circumstances),
since these are easily available. We already have a significant
amount of (hybrid) sanskrit versions of the early suttas in digital
format, and would hope to eventually include all the available Skt
material (which is becoming quite a large amount).

A further large-scale project would be to include correspondence
tables. The concordances between the Nikayas and Agamas were first
done by Akanuma in 1929, and his is still the only work available to
English speakers in the subject. It has all the errors one can only
expect from a groundbreaking work of this scope. Rod Bucknell has
compiled an updated concordance, using the revised tables in the
modern Fo Guang edition of the Agamas. But even these have their
errors. Ven Analayo is working through the Majjhima, and in a year or
two will have completed this project, including a thourough revision
of all concordances. I have done a little work on the Samyutta,
enought to convince me that the job needs a more thorough going-over.

So anyway, these concordance tables can be included in the website.
Now, just to put them up there would already be a great service,
making widely available concordances that are more accurate and easy
to use than the standard edition. But we can do much more than that.

I envisage creating a system whereby each reference in the
concordance can be linked to the actual sutta on the web. So you look
at the concordance under, say, DN 1. You click on the Pali link, that
takes you to the Pali version of the sutta. You click on the Chinese
ref, that takes you to the CBETA site for the Chinese version. If
there is a Skt version, that link takes you there. Translations can
also be included: one click takes you to the English trans of the
Pali, another to the English trans of the Chinese (which in fact
already exists on the web). The system can be extended to include
relevant commentaries, studies, etc.

Obviously we are starting to talk about a big project here. It might
be useful to start out with a manageable chunk as a pilot project.
Perhaps we could do the Digha before proceeding with the other
collections.