Apology to the group

[dargie at lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au]

During the past four or five months of my subscription to this list I have
taken the "Softly, softly ..." approach to this discussion group, so that I
could learn initially as much as possible about discussion list protocol and
specific 'house rules'.

Such was the advice of a colleague of mine at the University of Queensland:
that first I learn the protocol and thence introduce myself.  And as the
months passed I felt that I was ready to take part in this interesting
forum.  So I began to prepare in my mind an introductory address that
reflected the level of commitment that I have to Indological studies and my
sense of gratitude for being able to take part in future discussions with
many esteemed colleagues.

You might imagine my surprise then, when I receieved mail from Dominik and
Lars Martin last week informing me that a little test message of mine,
directed to the machine next door, was delivered to each of the subscribers
of Indology.

Therefore, preceding my maiden speech, please accept my apologies for
unnecessary disk space, eye strain, or annoyance brought about by my
bumbling.  (-:


Brief Biography:

After becoming disillusioned with a career in economics during the
mid-eighties, I found great pleasure and reward in studying Oriental and
Indian philosophy and religion.  To my parent's bewilderment, I pursued such
studies with increasing seriousness.  I found (quite to my surprise!) that
studying Sanskrit (as a second language) improved my comprehension and
expression in English (my first language).  Since then, Sanskrit has become
one of my obsessions.

Presently I am enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Queensland,
Australia. My topic involves a 'computational linguistic' approach to
Sanskrit texts, particularly commentarial texts such as Sankara's
commentaries and works of similar vintage and style.

On the list, I have been very interested to read the fonts/encoding
discussion and the critical editions discussion.  Also, the few complaints
of undue attention given to Sankara's advaita, and to vedanta in general,
applies clearly in my case.  

Finally, I do have some advice for those trying to sort Sanskrit words in
roman transliteration sets on computers.  The answer is an artificial 'third
party' transliteration, consisting of alpha-numeric characters (eg. a0, a1,
a2, ..., b0, b1, ..., c0, ...) that CAN be sorted by the computer.  The
trick is to 'global change' each of the characters of the text or list into
the correct order in the alpha-numeric 'dummy aphabet'.  However, the order
in which the global changes are made is crucial to every character being
transliterated correctly.  I will work out this process with those who have
already requested help and post suggestions to the list at a later stage.

Regards to all those who maintain/utilise the Indology list

David

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David Dargie
Studies in Religion
University of Queensland
email: dargie at lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au
Phone: +61 7 365 3165
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