Update 2 to Pali Canon online

[L.S. Cousins]

Happily, I can now announce that the second update to the machine-readable
version of the Sinhalese edition (BJT) from IBRIC is now available from the
Journal of Buddhist Ethics (JBE) sites in the U.K. and U.S. This is, as
previously announced, a more substantial update. In particular it should be
noted that the inclusions of page references to the PTS editions is now
substantially complete. (Improvements to particular texts are detailed
below.) It is hoped that the next update will also involve substantial
improvements but it is possible that this will not be for another six
months.

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 Dhammavihari (the Director of IBRIC) has asked me to add the
following note of thanks:

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

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 once.

My special thanks go to our long-standing friend, Lance S Cousins,
who over the last 3 months, has  been working closely with us,
going though our index files identifying numerous errors
which could be corrected by "find and replace".

I hope we are getting closer to an Internationally acceptable Public Domain
version of the Pali Canon.

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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) and his associates.

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The main changes to the texts for Update 2 are as follows:

 One volume of the Vinaya (BJT Vol 1/PTS Vol IV) and the whole of the
Diigha-nikaaya and the Majjhima-nikaaya have been proof-read once. The
versions of the Mahaaniddesa and Cuu.laniddesa have been partially
spell-checked. Further missing pages in the Kathaavatthu have been added.
All the PTS page numbering is now complete, including the the four
postcanonical texts. Some 30,000 errors have been identified and corrected
in different texts.

The main changes to the texts for Update 1 were 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