Why are we so far behind?

[Brian Akers]

I recently received a catalog that contained the following product:

Hermeneutika BibleWorks 4.0 on CD-ROM. $595 list price; $350 street price.

"There are 58 Bible translations in 20 languages (e.g., NRSV with Apocrypha,
Spanish, German, French), 9 original language texts with 7 morphology
databases, 5 Greek lexicons and dictionaries, 3 Hebrew lexicons and
dictionaries, plus 8 practical reference works. . . . There are also
multi-text synchronous interlinears, parallel display modes, an auto-parser,
an auto-lexicon, and a new, more sophisticated second-generation search
engine . . ."

Does Indology have anything even remotely like this? Why not? Are there
simply too few of us?

Of course, I can think of many commercial and financial reasons, but I'm also
wondering about the field's priorities. Is it in the best interests of the
field as a whole to produce innumerable highly-specialized journal articles
and neglect basic work like this? Could resources be re-allocated within
existing funding levels? Or am I the only one who finds the current situation
odd and unsatisfactory?

Looking forward to other's opinions.

Brian


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Brian Dana Akers
www.pipeline.com/~sfauthor/
sfauthor at aol.com