Early Buddhist Studies Links

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The most comprehensive archive of  Indian

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La Trobe University presents a searchable version of the Sri-Jayanti edition Tipitaka at:

http://www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au/dcd/pali.htm

This website also invites proofreaders to send their corrections so that the Sri-Jayanti edition can get improved. (The original Sri-Jayanti edition is quite badly edited, there are typos on almost every page and paragraphs out of place etc.)

The online VRI edition of the Pali Tipitaka:

http://www.tipitaka.org/tipitaka/booklistframe2.html

This version is better edited than the Sri-Jayanti one, but is not in fact the text of the Chattha-Sangayana (Sixth Council) edition. It is really based on the Burmese 5th council edition. The VRI didn't know this until too late. In addition, it is in an out of date, unique font, but you can convert it using the Pali scratch pad.

There is also a conversion facility for the above VRI edition which has several advantages and a few disadvantages too. It is at:

http://www.fsnow.com/pali/cscdconv/

The advantages are: i) it is in UTF-8 coding which is the new standard, ii) it is easy to copy and paste (the old CSCD wouldn't let you scroll down at the same time as highlighting), iii) it can be installed on any platform (the CSCD is only compatible, and then only barely, with Windows), iv) it doesn't keep crashing all the time (like the CSCD).

The disadvantages are: i) there is a complicated procedure for finding the page number (i.e. highlight the passage you want to reference, right click, choose 'view selection source', wait, the passage will appear highlighted amongst the html source code, somewhere amongst it you will see, eg. P=1.0037 which means: “roman (i.e. PTS Pali edition) volume 1 and page no.37”. If this code appears partway through the passage you're trying to reference you need to count from the previous page. Also, if you select too small a chunk then only that chunk will appear when you choose 'view selection source' and then it may well not have a page no. marker amongst it, if so, go back to the html file, select a bit more, and try again.), ii) there are several glitches with the navigation tree file in the version available at Frank Snow's website, and it seems he still hasn't uploaded the updated version. Look in the 'files' section in the Early Buddhism forum's digital libary and you will find an .html file called 'tptk-leftcolumn.htm', download it and put it into the folder "cscd>nav>latin" to replace the old version of the file with the same name there, then the navigation tree will all work, iii) it's harder to search because you can only search within a certain file, not throughout the whole Tipitaka (or you may be able to somehow but it's not easy). I use the La-Trobe online Tipitaka for searching because VRI won't run on Linux at all, and barely runs on MS Windows.

Access to Insight:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index.html

This website contains vast amounts of Buddhist texts, Theravada or early Buddhist, Suttas and Vinaya, almost no Abhidhamma materials. There are also modern works by various Theravada teachers, especially from the Thai Forest Tradition. The translations are mostly by Aj. Geoff Thanissaro, they are second best to Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi's (see www.wisdompubs.org) both in terms of accuracy and fluency but at least they're free.

In my opinion, the main translator has certain eccentric and idiosyncratic interpretations of a few points (nibbana, anatta, jhana) which are frequently hot-topics in discussion fora. When these topics are involved in Suttas translated by him I recommend comparing them with the translation by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi if possible, or another translator.

The Chinese Tipitaka (in Chinese) is available at:

http://www.cbeta.org/index.htm

CBeta also send out a CD version with a program that has an English graphical interface and facilities that make it slightly easier for non-Chinese readers to find things and a very luxuriously convenient citation facility. Unfortunately it doesn't quite work with Linux yet (even though it says it does on the CD case), but they promise it will do soon. The CD version is better because in some Sutras* there are Pali/ Sanskrit terms, mostly proper nouns (people and places) linked to the text in a box in the corner which helps non-Chinese readers to find their place. *In the Chinese one 'text' is called a 'Sutra', eg. the whole Madhyama-Agama is one 'Sutra'.

Tibetan Kengyur Input Project:

http://www.thdl.org/xml/show.php?xml=/collections/literature/kangteng/kangteng.xml&div=thdl_kt_03_02

This is part of the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library. It says that they are going to put up a complete free edition of the Tibetan canon in a form which will be convenient for scholars, so far not much has appeared, but they already have a free Tibetan unicode font, a translation facility and other useful tools. Obviously the translation facility isn't really enough to produce a translation, but it would be very helpful for a person learning to translate Tibetan:

http://www.thdl.org/reference/translation-tool.html

The Digital Buddhist Sanskrit Canon is gradually being put up at:

http://www.uwest.edu/UWest/sanskritweb/index.html

Some of the 'Sutras' included would not be regarded as 'early' by historians, though they can still be indirectly relevant to the study of 'early' Buddhism historically. There are several important early texts there though, including some Vinaya texts, but so far they're only listed but not uploaded yet.

There are also some early Sanskrit sutras available in the 'files' section of the Early Buddhism forum digital library under 'SKT texts.zip'.

Ekottarik'Agama translations by Ven. Pasadhika, Thich Huyen-Vi, and Sara Boin-Webb for the Buddhist Studies Review:

http://ekottara.googlepages.com/

IDP, the International Dunhuang Project:

http://idp.bl.uk/

Here they are gradually putting up all the manuscripts in all languages and scripts in all public collections around the world that were found at Dunhuang in Central Asia, now China. A few have transliterations into romanized Tibetan, such as this interesting looking one about the history of the 18 schools, the five points of Mahadeva etc. (try putting it through the translation facility at THDL):

http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_scroll_h.a4d?recnum=4878;index=7

TITUS, the Turfan manuscripts project:

http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm

This site aims to make available the famous Turfan collection of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. It has images of manuscripts from Central Asia in various scripts as well as some transliterations, including some in Tocharian. There may be some translations, but into German. Unfortunately the website seems to be quite badly constructed and hard to use.

VATEC, a digital online searchable website with texts (some are Buddhist) in Old Turkish:

http://vatec2.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/vatecasp/query.htm

Here are some which are categorised as 'buddhistische' in the comment:

http://vatec2.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/vatecasp/queryord.asp?word=buddhistisch&lang=&text=&cat=&spec=SEARCH

I found this list of the contents of the archive in an old newsletter of the project (http://casww.iatp.org.ge/calarc/calarc_publ30.html)

1. Several manuscripts of the Chuastuanift (Manichaean Confession of Sins)

   text in the Uighur and Manichean scripts: the London scroll (in full), the

   Berlin and the Saint-Petersburg manuscripts (in part), and a compiled text

2. Irk Bitig (A Book of Omens) in the runiform script

3. A Nestorian Old Turkic text: Wedding blessings (Syriac script)

4. Manichaean Old Turkic texts (51 fragments, Manichaean and Uighur scripts)

5. A fragment of a cosmogonic lapidary (runiform script)

6. Buddhist texts in Sogdian script (34 fragments)

7. Panchatantra fragments (Fables, Uighur script)

8. The third book of the Xuanzang biography in Old Turkic

9. A number of manuscripts of Altun Yarok (an Uighur translation of the

   Suvarnaprabhasottamasutra) and a compiled text

10. A number of manuscripts first edited by Peter Zieme in Berliner

   Turfantexte 13.

When I trawled through the results of a search "buddh*" I found only part of the biography of Xuan-Zang (aka Hsuan-Hsang), Altun-Yarok Suvarnaprabhasottamasutra (late Mahayana), and among the Buddhist texts in Sogdian script I found the Vimalkirtinidesasutra, Saddharmapundarikasutra and a few other less well known late Mahayana Sutras. Also, allmost all of the translations are in German. So this archive is not of much interest for early Buddhist studies, but of significant historical interest.

Turfanforschung, is a digital archive of manuscripts found in Turfan:

(So far there are only scans of the actual manuscripts not edited texts or translations.)

http://www.bbaw.de/forschung/turfanforschung/dta/index.html

Here is a table of the scripts and languages they found at Turfan (must have been an amazingly multicultural place):

http://www.bbaw.de/bbaw/Forschung/Forschungsprojekte/turfanforschung/bilder/schriftundsprache

Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project, which focusses on Gandharan Buddhist texts in Kharosthi script:

http://depts.washington.edu/ebmp/index.php

This one has images of manuscripts and lots of transliterations of manuscripts and inscriptions found in central Asia, as well as a few translations, a list of publications and a Gandhari dictionary project.

Survery of the Buddhist Manuscripts in the Turfan Collection, by Wille:

http://www.bbaw.de/bbaw/Forschung/Forschungsprojekte/turfanforschung/bilder/Wille.pdf#search=%22SHT%20Sanskrithandschriften%20aus%20der%20Turfanfunden%22

This is the biggest collection of early Buddhist texts preserved in BH Sanskrit, found around Turfan in Eastern Turkestan. The texts in Sanskrithandschriften aus der Turfanfunden are often scattered through the volumes, because they were published gradually as they edited them. So Wille's survey is extremely useful for finding the scattered bits of single texts among the volumes.

This is a list of all the volumes of Sanskrithandschriften aus der Turfanfunden:

http://kohd.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/frameuk.htm

The total cost of all 9 volumes (a tenth is in print) is €1064 plus postage. (31/08/06)

To order, email: service@dav-buchhandlung.de

(You can also order online with a credit card at http://www.dav-buchhandlung.de/, but I couldn't get all nine volumes to appear in one search.)

Info about the Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schoyen Collection:

http://folk.uio.no/braarvig/msc/msc.html

Contains a link to Hermes the publishers' order info.

Comparative Catalogue Projects

Suttacentral.net:

http://suttacentral.net/

An ongoing project to make available automated correspondence tables for all the early Sutta/ Sutra and Vinaya texts which will take you to the online versions of the texts and also integrate software which helps beginners learn to read them (so far only the Digha is mostly done).

Comparative catalogue of the Mongolian Kanjur, Tibetan Kengyur and Sanskrit correspondences:

http://andrewglass.org/mong.php?PHPSESSID=29d720f42c000e39ead239973f3d9927

The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue

http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/descriptive_catalogue/

This is a comparative catelogue of Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan correspondences with the Korean canon (which is mostly identical to the Chinese).

Dictionaries and Language Learning Facilities

The PTS Pali dictionary:

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/

Macmillan's Sanskrit dictionary is also available at the same website (but the main entries are in Devanagiri script).

Monnier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary:

http://members.chello.nl/l.bontes/sans_n.htm

"Comprehensive Pali Resources" at Esangha Pali group:

http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/index.php?showtopic=18414

This list is very good, but it's not quite comprehensive, one other very handy tool I use is called 'Pali Scratch Pad' made by Ven. Yuttadhammo, you can find it at:

http://yuttadhammo.sirimangalo.org/files/convertpad.htm

I use open office, one of the drawbacks is that it's not so easy to set up shortcuts for special characters, so what I do is type Pali in velthius and then copy and paste it through the Pali Scratch Pad and back again to turn it into UTF-8. The scratch pad can also be saved for offline use.

Ven. Yuttadhammo's also made a Pali reader which is very good for intermediate Pali learners, at:
http://palireader.sourceforge.net/

Dr. EYE is a very useful commercial Chinese reader software which can be used together with the CBETA digital Chinese Tripitaka, and you can get a special vocabulary extension for ancient Buddhist terminology free to go with it (enquire from sujato at gmail.com). With the special vocab it will tell you all the Sanskrit roots which are translated with a certain Chinese character. Dr. Eye can be purchased at:

http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/30857.htm

Popjisyo is a free Chinese reader facility here, currently it's not really suitable for classical or ancient Chinese, such as in the Agamas, but they might include the special vocab later:

http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx

Shanyou, is a project to create a universal Buddhist scriptural languages reader, the page about the project is at sourceforge but it's not done yet:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/shanyou

Buddhist Studies Academic Associations

There's a new Australasian Association of Buddhist Studies at:

http://www.buddhiststudies.org.au/

They're mostly active in Sydney so far.

The UK Association for Buddhist Studies:

http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0dwe/bsa.shtml

Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies:

http://www.ocbs.org/

Digital Libraries, Online Journals and Library Catelogue Searches

INDOLOGY: Resources for Indological Scholarship:

http://indology.info/

Excellent.

One of the papers available for free is LS Cousins, “On the Date of the Historical Buddha”:

http://indology.info/papers/cousins/

Journal of Buddhist Ethics:

http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/

An academic journal for free!

East Asian Libraries Cooperative:

http://pears2.lib.ohio-state.edu/

The Electronic Buddhist Text Initiative (Taiwan):

http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/ebti.htm

Electronic Resources for the Study of Buddhist Texts:

http://www.geocities.com/manjushri_2000/buddhisttexts.html

Resources for the Study of East-Asian Philosophy and Religion:

http://www.library.ucla.edu/eastasian/e_asia.htm

CHIBS Chung-Hua Institute of Buddhist Studies

http://www.chibs.edu.tw/e-index.htm
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/e-CBS.htm

Includes a free library of adademic papers, including many in English.

Buddhist Digital Library and Museum:

http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/BDLM/front.htm

This is also the group who publish the CBETA edition of the Chinese Tripitaka for free.

This is supposed to be a comprehensive web directory of manuscript collections accessible on the internet:

http://www.zeroland.co.nz/manuscripts.html

Repositorium Indica et Buddhica:

http://indica-et-buddhica.org/repositorium/

Search the Bibliotheque Nationale de France:

http://www.bnf.fr/pages/zNavigat/frame/version_anglaise.htm?ancre=english.htm

Includes many online documents for free, but not Journal Asiatique.

WorldCat, a worldwide library search:

http://www.worldcat.org/

Excellent.

A Few Major Publishers of Buddhist books

The Pali Text Society:

http://www.palitext.com/

Wisdom Publications
have Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi's excellent translations of the Majjhima and Samyutta Nikaya (I've heard he's more than halfway through a complete translation of the Anguttara now):

www.wisdompubs.org

Buddhist Publication Soceity

http://www.bps.lk/

Have a vast catalogue of publications on Buddhism, mostly Theravada.

Motilal Barnasidass

http://www.mlbd.com/

The oldest and biggest Indological publishers in India. There are many other Indian publishers and book dealers with a good selection of rare Buddhalogical and Indological books.

Miscellaneous

Suncult is a Mozilla addon which tells you the time of dawnrise (arunaggamana, when monks can have breakfast) and solar midday (when they have to finish lunch before), as well as the next Uposatha day (remember to count which day the full moon or new moon falls in using the Indian system in which the day changes at dawnrise rather than midnight):

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1915/

Santi Forest Monastery writings page:

http://santifm1.0.googlepages.com/writings

Bodhi Monastery

http://www.bodhimonastery.net/main.html

The monastery where Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi is now staying. It is in the tradition of Master Yin Shun who pioneered the study of early Buddhism in Taiwan and whose research is becoming extremely influential in Buddhist scholarship in the west too.

Andrewglass.org projects page:

http://andrewglass.org/projects.php?PHPSESSID=29d720f42c000e39ead239973f3d9927

He has a “Preliminary Paleography of Kharosthi” and a study of Four Samyukt'Agama type Sutras in Gandhari from the Senior collection, which was found in Afghanistan. They're wonderful Suttas, just scroll down to p.169 for the edited texts and translations if you want to skip the technical stuff.

Piya Tan's Sutta study guides, called “The Living Word of the Buddha”:

http://dharmafarer.googlepages.com/

Google's no.1 Buddhist website, which just gives links to many of the best other websites:

http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Buddhism.html

Google Scholar might also be handy, for those with credit cards. It takes you to academic papers in journals, unfortunately most of them you have to pay for.

http://scholar.google.com/

Buddhanet:

http://www.buddhanet.net/

Features a worldwide directory of Buddhist monasteries and retreat centres, etc.

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Websangha Early Buddhism Forum:

http://www.forum.websangha.org/viewforum.php?f=18&sid=f206b9eed90678590acacd9cd4fa575e

Early Buddhism Forum’s Digital Library:

http://www.library.websangha.org/earlybuddhism/

Ven. Varado's website with translations of early Buddhist texts:

http://translations.awardspace.co.uk/

A parallel edition of the Abhidhammakosa in Sanskrit and Chinese by Fan Jing:

http://sfl.pku.edu.cn/sanskrit/etxt/chap1/abhidharmakosa-etxt.pdf#search=%22ABHIDHARMAKO%C5%9AA%0ABy%20Fan%20Jingjing%22