Dear colleagues,

Earlier this month, a group of scholars assembled at the EFEO Center in Pondicherry for a conference on the theme "From Vijayapurī to Śrīkṣetra? The beginnings of Buddhist exchange across the Bay of Bengal". The conference program is attached to this message. We intend to publish the papers before too long.

The conference was the conclusion to a two-year collaborative research project in Buddhist Studies made possible by a grant from The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation administered by the American Council of Learned Societies. A first article on the Indian side of the project has just appeared in BEFEO 102; an article on the Burmese side of the project has been submitted for publication in the same journal.

The main published outcome of the project, however, takes the form of two websites, which I am happy to make public today:

- Early Inscriptions of Āndhradeśa: <http://hisoma.huma-num.fr/exist/apps/EIAD/index2.html>

- Corpus of Pyu Inscriptions: <http://hisoma.huma-num.fr/exist/apps/pyu/index2.html>

The first at this time presents only 173 out of the total of more than 700 inscriptions of the early historic and early medieval Āndhra region that will be included once the database is complete, which should take us a few more years. The second already now presents the vast majority of the known inscriptions of the Pyu civilization of first-millennium Burma.

We are still in the process of adding images and proofreading, and we're also facing some technical growing pains, i.a. with the search function, but I expect these to be progressively ironed out over the coming months. All comments and corrections are welcome at my address <arlo.griffiths@efeo.net>.

Arlo Griffiths