Machine readable text of Buddhacarita

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On a recent visit to England, Peter Schreiner gave me a copy of the
Buddhacarita on disk.  I shall be depositing it for Peter at the Oxford
Text Archive, where it will be available to all and sundry, at no
cost.
 
I could also put a copy in the file store associated with this INDOLOGY
group, on the Liverpool machine (subject to agreement from the
Liverpool authorities).  Then we INDOLOGISTs could retrieve a copy in a
simple way, using one of the LISTSERV commands (sending something like
"send buddhacarita text"  to "listserv at liverpool.ac.uk").  The file
would be sent to you as email.
 
Does this appeal to us?
 
Peter, what do you think?
 
Incidentally, for those who are not acquainted with Professor
Schreiner's work, I hope he will not mind if I mention the fact that he
has typed onto disk a large number of large texts, including several
major classical Sanskrit works, and at least two puranas.  He codes the
texts for sandhi and compound breaks as he goes, so the texts are in a
very useful state for textual analysis.  I know Peter is very diffident
about the quality of the transcriptions, but from what I have seen the
texts are in excellent shape, and I am certain that any of us who used
them would be only too glad to contribute corrections to a master
copy.  (I am very grateful to Professor Deshpande, who did a very
thorough job correcting the Bhagavadgita text that I had had scanned
from the Edgerton edition, using a Kurzweil scanner; this text is
available in the Oxford archive.)
 
I know that Peter does not have time to deal with a lot of requests
for texts, so perhaps people could refrain from asking him about
texts until he volunteers information.  At the present, the
Buddhacarita is on offer, via me.
 
Dominik