Project Name: Text-Input of Buddhist texts from Central Asia

Project Representative: Jost Gippert, University Frankfurt, Germany

Description:

Within the TITUS project (Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien), several Buddhist texts written in Indo-European languages from Central Asia have been prepared electronically for an internet retrieval. The project aims at enlarging the retrieval basis by including further texts in languages of this area. One goal consists in preparing a catalogue of annotated texts.

Internet retrieval in the sense of the TITUS project means, among other things, the production of slides of the manuscripts that contain the texts, and scanning and storing them as graphic images. The characters of the different scripts will also be encoded, integrated into Unicode and, if possible, made available as a screen font.

A database to be made available in the internet will include a catalogue of Tocharian, Khotanese, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Pali Buddhist texts with their interrelationships indicated by reference to the canonical texts. Further linking to other texts of EBTI is planned.

Furthermore, a commentary of the Tocharian texts and a dictionary indicating parallels between the different languages is planned.