RAMAYANA & MAHABHARATA e-texts

Thomas B. Ridgeway ridgeway at blackbox.hacc.washington.edu
Tue Nov 15 17:41:30 UTC 1994


Good day,
 
Below are some comments returned to correspondents in private mail
exchanges which may be of public interest.

I heartily agree that Tokunaga and his group have performed a remarkable
service to the Indological community; and, for that matter, to other
academic communities also, when they catch on.

Regarding the files on blackbox:
  All the files ending in .Z are compressed with the Unix 'compress' utility.
This is, ahh . . ., inconvenient, let us say, for those without access to
a unix system to uncompress them.  In the fullness of time, I intend to
have the uncompressed standard transcription files available, but for initial
rebroadcast it seems to me best to have the files here just as they have been
released.  Blackbox is a little squeezed for space so I cannot really store 
them uncompressed without doing some housekeeping, which I will do when the
retranscribed versions are ready.

Regarding retranscription, I will look for more feedback through the course 
of the day and night today.  If all seems well, I should be able to deposit
the remainder of both texts tomorrow (i.e. Wednesday morning Pacific coast
time).

Regarding transcription in the texts: 
  In the Mahabharata (so far as I have looked) a single period marks word 
separations both within and without compounds.  In the Ramayana I believe 
that two periods indicates word break, one period indicates compounded-
form-boundary.  
  Query: how would you think it best to retranscribe the '..' '.' 
notation?  Possibly replace '..' by space and leave '.' as it is?
 Also: in the Mahabharata ';' (semicolon) is sometimes used as a
middle-of-line divider in addition to doing duty as 'hiatus' marker.

cheers,
Tom
 






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