[Buddha-l] Sutta Central

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

19 Sep 2006
 
SuttaCentral: Online Sutta Correspondence Project

Santi Forest Monastery, Bundanoon, NSW, Australia

Self-description:
"SuttaCentral aims at facilitating the study of Buddhist texts from comparative and historical perspectives. It focuses on the texts that represent 'Early Buddhism', texts preserved not only in the Pali Sutta and Vinaya Pitakas but also in Chinese and Tibetan translations and in fragmentary remains in Sanskrit and other languages.

SuttaCentral offers a gateway to this material by enabling users to quickly identify the Chinese, Tibetan, and/or Sanskrit parallels of any given Pali discourse - or vice versa. Having found that information, one can then can click on the relevant links and consult the actual texts, most of which are accessible from other web-sites. Later we also hope to provide direct access to available English translations.

The system focuses initially on providing the correspondence data from the perspective of the Pali suttas; that is, given a particular Pali sutta, one can find the parallels in other textual languages. Finding parallels in the reverse direction will become possible in due course. In building SuttaCentral, we plan to work through the nikayas, one by one, in the traditional sequence. At present the Digha and Majjhima Nikayas are complete. Data on the remaining nikayas will become accessible as the relevant research and data-entry work progresses.

The data supplied here offer substantial improvements and additions over the pioneering work by Akanuma (Comparative Catalogue of Chinese Agamas & Pali Nikayas, 1929) [Chizen Akanuma, The Comparative Catalogue of Chinese Agamas and Pali Nikayas. (Nagoya, Japan: Hijinaku-Shobo, 1929; reprint, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1990) - ed.], until now the standard reference work in this area. Nevertheless, there is still much room for improvement. We therefore invite other scholars working on this same early Buddhist material to provide input to SuttaCentral (see 'Contacts'), so that the material displayed is continually refined for greater accuracy and completeness. [...]

Sutta Central was conceived and designed by the collective imaginations of Venerable Analayo (Germany), Rod Bucknell (Australia), and Bhante Sujato (Australia), based on sutta correspondence tables compiled by Rod Bucknell and Ven. Analayo."

Site contents:
* Collections (Pali, Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Gandhari, Khotanese, Uighur); * Search (Help, by Name, by Abbreviation and number, by Volume/Page reference); * Vision Statement; * Contacts.

URL http://www.suttacentral.net/

Internet Archive http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.suttacentral.net/

Link reported by: Bhante Sujato (sujato--at--gmail.com)

* Resource type [news - documents - study - corporate info. - online guide]:
Documents/Study
* Publisher [academic - business - govt. - library/museum - NGO - other]:
Other
* Scholarly usefulness [essential - v.useful - useful - interesting - marginal]:
Essential
* External links to the resource [over 3,000 - under 3,000 - under 1,000
 - under 300 - under 100 - under 30]: under 30
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Src: The Asian Studies WWW Monitor ISSN 1329-9778
URL http://coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-www-monitor.html
The e-journal [est. Apr 1994] provides free abstracts
and reviews of new/updated online resources of significance to
research, teaching and communications dealing with the Asian Studies.
The email edition of this Journal has now over 6,580 subscribers.
The AS WWW Monitor does not necessarily endorse contents,
or policies of the Internet resources it abstracts.

-- 

Erik

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