Fifth anniversary of Gaudiya Grantha Mandira

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

It is with some pride that the editors of the Gaudiya Grantha Mandir celebrate

the fifth anniversaryof the site name being registered the. In this time, we

have a number of achievements that we can point to with pride:

 

• Nearly 600 different Sanskrit documents of varying lengths, rarity and

importance.

• More than 800 members

• More than 170,000 documents have been downloaded from the site, including the

2400 copies of the archive. Most Google searches for Sanskrit Gaudiya Vaishnava

texts will give Grantha Mandir links near or at the top of its results.

 

Though Sanskrit and other Indian languages lag behind other classical and

literary languages (e.g. Latin and Greek) in the digitization of their corpus,

work in this are is beginning to pick up considerably. There are universities

like Tubingen as well as certain sectarian organizations engaged in various

projects, but without any coordination, as each is generally restricted to the

specific interests of individual researchers. Areas that we at GGM are

concentrating on—Gaudiya and other Vaishnava texts, kavya, rasa-shastra,

etc.—are underrepresented in the work that has been done so far.

 

Though I declared more than a year ago that there would be a moratorium on

posting, I was unable to keep my word. Over the past six months, a total of 42

documents were uploaded to the site, more than 15 megabytes of text, bringing

the total to 588. This is all the more amazing when you consider that it is

nearly all the work of one man, myself!

 

To see which texts have been uploaded over the past six months, please refer

to the following threads on the Grantha Mandir forum.

http://sabha.granthamandira.org/index.php?showtopic=117

http://sabha.granthamandira.org/index.php?showtopic=119

 

However, it is becoming impossible for me to continue alone, for both personal

and more pressingly financial reasons. Frankly I NEED HELP in order to bring

this important task to completion. I need to be able to hire typists and

programmers in order to be able to complete at least the basic Gaudiya Vaishnava

canon and to make it more easily usable as a crossreferencing database that will

make it an even more useful tool for scholars, researchers and bhaktas.

 

Some of the projects that we look forward to completing—

 

• Bhagavata commentaries of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, as well as of other

traditions.

• Ujjvala-nilamani, Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, Brihad-bhagavatamrita commentaries

• Vaishnava padavali

• Braj bhasha literature (Nimbarka, Haridasi, Radhavallabhi, Gaudiya)

• Vedanta-sutra bhashyas of different traditions (Govinda-bhashya, Nimbarka,

Keshava Kashmiri, Vallabha)

• Orissan (Pancha-sakha, Chaitanyaite texts.)

• Hundreds of other texts discovered in the last century, some published some

not.

 

Funds are needed—

 

• To track down rare literature, manuscripts. Much is now available on

microfiche, etc., and can be purchased. Travel to India. Engaging people to do

the work.

• Hire typists who have an elementary knowledge of Sanskrit—enough to be able to

recognize sandhi, etc.

• Engage information technicians to do some of the programming work that will be

need to upgrade the database technology, to insert links and cross-references,

etc.

• Technicians, eventually, to make everything available on DVD.

• Hardware here and in India, as well as communications expenses (internet

connections, software packages, etc.)

• Give some compensation to contributors, editors and webmasters for the

thousands of hours they have devoted to this work and will do in the future.

 

We humbly ask anyone who is a position to finance this project to come

forward, either as a direct contributor, or with suggestions for a course of

action to take. I am not a member of any universitys staff, and so it makes

seeking grants a little more difficult. But if anyone knows of any altruistic

Sanskrit lovers of means, then please put me in contact with them by writing to

the following address jankbrz.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Jan Brzezinski and Neal Delmonico, editors.

 

========================

A Summer Course in Beginning Sanskrit

 

Introductory Sanskrit (SANS 102) will be taught by Professor Ashok Aklujkar in

the second term of the 2006 summer session at the University of British

Columbia. This will be the last time Professor Aklujkar will teach this course

at UBC, because he will retire from the Department of Asian Studies, (Vancouver,

B.C., Canada V6T 1Z2) at the end of 2006 in keeping with the mandatory

retirement policy currently in force at UBC.

 

The dates set for the course are Monday 17 July - Saturday 26 August 2006,

with a two-hour final examination taking place on the last day. During the

specified six weeks, the class will meet for 3-3.5 hours each on Monday,

Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, making a total of 78 hours of instruction and

testing. Students will have Wednesdays and weekends free for consolidation of

what they learn on the other days. The course has traditionally been useful to

students interested in South Asian history, culture, languages, linguistic

thought, philosophies and religions and to students interested in the Classics

of the Western tradition.

 

The current UBC fees for such a 6-credit course are C$802.20 for Canadian

students and C$3,324.00 for international students. These *may* change slightly

in 2006.

The course credits presuppose a term or semester system. They may correspond

to a higher number at universities following the quarter system. There are no

prerequisites for the course other than suitability for admission at the

University of British Columbia. Inquiries regarding this suitability should be

directed to Enrolment Services at UBC: Web students.ubc.ca/admissions, tel:

604-822-3414,

 

Other inquiries of a practical nature should be made at the Department of

Asian Studies: <astudies, tel: 604-822-0019.

 

For inquiries regarding course content and the textbook _Sanskrit: an Easy

Introduction to an Enchanting Language_., Prof. Aklujkar can be contacted at

<aklujkar, tel. 1-604-822-5185, 1-604-274-5353.

 

Interested students coming from distant places should inquire at their

universities or with the local India specialists if any financial assistance is

available. For non-Canadian students, exchange agreements between Canada and

their country of residence may prove to be useful. Vancouver, one of the most

beautiful cities in the world, is well-known for its pleasant summers.

 

 

 

 

 

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