update to Pali texts

[L.S. Cousins]

It is now some time since we announced the availability on-line of the
machine-readable version of the Sinhalese edition (BJT) from IBRIC. At that
time we promised periodic updates to these texts (not yet proof-read).
Unhappily the schedule slipped badly due mainly to the long period of power
cuts in Sri Lanka and a few other, miscellaneous problems.

Happily, I can announce that the first update is now available from the
Journal of Buddhist Ethics (JBE) sites in the U.K. and U.S. This is perhaps
best viewed as a maintenance update with limited changes. So probably those
who do not use the files for regular, detailed textual work may prefer to
wait for the second update. (Improvements to particular texts are detailed
below.) This is running on schedule at the moment and we hope to have it on
the fileservers at the end of January, if not before. It will contain more
substantial improvements to many texts.

As before the files are available from the JBE websites:

>http://www.gold.ac.uk/jbe/jbe.html
>http://www.cac.psu.edu/jbe/jbe.html

Or, they can be obtained by FTP:

ftp://ftp.cac.psu.edu/jbe/Pali
ftp://scorpio.gold.ac.uk/jbe/Pali

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Ven. Mettavihari (the Danish monk at IBRIC) has asked me to add the
following note of thanks:

We here at IBRIC would like to thank all the persons who has informed us of
errors in the tipitaka texts, and look forward to hearing more from you in
the future.

If we have not yet corrected all the errors that we have been informed of
by you,
then please bear with us and, if possible, send us a new list.

I would especially like to thank the persons who have mentioned omissions
in the
text. We have attempted to include in this update all the omitted passages
of which we have been informed but would be happy to be sent more
information of this kind.

Even a single word is much appreciated. It could well be wrong in 50 places
in the whole tipitaka as typists tend to make the same type of mistakes all
the time. We can then replace them all at the same time.

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To this we might perhaps add the thanks of those of us around the world who
are benefiting from the generosity  of Bhikkhu Professor Dhammavihari (the
Director of IBRIC), from the work of a number of Sinhalese monk scholars in
Sri Lanka and Australia and from the tireless efforts of Ven. Mettavihari
himself.

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The main changes to the texts for Update 1 are as follows:

Missing sections in the Diigha-nikaaya, Jaataka and Kathaavatthu have been
added. Revised version of AN is included. There is some additional PTS page
numbering in the Khuddaka-nikaaya. Amendments have been made to the
Mahaaniddesa. Small numbers of errors in various texts have been corrected.

Lance Cousins

MANCHESTER, UK
Email: mhcrxlc at dir.mcc.ac.uk