Stackpole Sanskrit and Chinese Corner

This page consists principally of a little Utility for typing Sanskrit (Devanagari and Romanised) into Word97 and a few translations of Sanskrit and Pali texts that I have done over the years, notably the Ashtavakra Gita ("The Song of Ashtavakra") and the Vivekachudamani ("The Crest Jewel of Wisdom"), together with their original Sanskrit texts. In both cases, to have the Sanskrit display properly you will need a CSX font. CSX stands for Classical Sanskrit eXtended and is an internationally agreed system for located the characters with diacritical marks necessary displaying and printing Sanskrit in Romanised Type (as opposed to the traditional Indian typeface, known as Devanagari). Putting these texts here means that I can keep them up-to-date with any minor alterations and corrections I may make in them, just uploading them to more imortant Sanskrit text sites when sufficient corrections have accumulated to make it worthwhile.

There are several other fonts suitable for displaying Sanskrit in Romanised type. One of these which is particularly useful for those who want to be able also to type using the common European accents, like graves and acutes, is the Nina 1.0 font. These fonts is available from the site indicated below.

Sanskrit Templates

This is a little collection of macros in three interrelated templates for MS Word 6 and MS Word 97 that I originally put together for my own use, but as it developed seemed to promise to be potentially useful to Sanskrit scholars in general - particularly, of course, those who use MS Word for writing or quoting in Sanskrit. It is a system for writing both/either in Devanagari script or in the Romanised Sanskrit with diacritical marks. The Devanagari includes the traditional combined consonants, and it is very simple to switch backwards and forwards between Devanagari and Roman, for either Sanskrit or English. It is extremely simple to use, and remarkably effective. It is completely Freeware. Again, this is a useful way to make it readily available incorporating any minor changes as they come along. The Romanised module includes the choice of either CSX fonts or the Nina 1.0 font mentioned above - which is less widely used at present, but does permit the use of accents as well. (In the CSX font layout many of the locations used by ANSI for European accents have been taken over for the Sanskrit characters with additional diacritical marks.)

There are two versions, the

MS Word 6 version (129K)

This at present permits Sanskrit typing in either of two formats - Devanagari and Romanised (Nina 1.0)

and the

MS Word 97 version (224K)

This permits Sanskrit typing in three different formats, and includes the Devanagari font (Sanskrit 1.2), Nina font (Nina 1.0) and CSX font (Sanskrit Roman Serif) which are required to use it to the full.

If you already have these three fonts then all you need is the upgrade version, which includes just the Templates and document file.

MS Word 97 upgrade version (105K)

I would like to acknowledge the kindness of the writers of the excellent Intranslator system for writing Devanagari, available from

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5105/Itranslt.html

for permission to use their fonts in this way.

A public domain CSX Font

Roman Sanskrit Serif

Sanskrit and Pali Texts with Translations

The Ashtavakra Gita (100K)

Vivekachudamani (86K)

The Dhammapada English Translation (82K)

The Dhammapada Pali Text (77K)

A Chinese Translation

I also include here a translation of the famous Chinese Zen text usually known as On Trust in the Heart (Xin Xin Ming) of the 6th. Patriarch of Zen, Seng Ts'an. It is a "translation" I have developed over many years, based on those of Arthur Waley and D. T. Suzuki. Waley's translation is more beautiful English, but Suzuki's is more scholarly accurate. I have tried to combine the qualities of both.

Also included is the Chinese original of the poem in Big5 format, together with a Pinyin transliteration. This can be read in a Chinese word processor such as NJStar, or in any major Windows wordprocessor with the useful little utility NJWin running in the background, although the Pinyin transliteration will be lost in this case. Both NJStar and NJWin can be obtained from http://www.njstar.com

For curiosity's sake I have also included a strange Christianised version of the Xin Xin Ming, known as The Gates of Paradise. This was discovered in the form of a very old, and sometimes barely readable manuscript in the cellar of an old West Wales Rectory. Nothing more is known about it. Did Seng Ts'an come to the West?

On Trust in the Heart (6K) (English translation only)

Xin Xin Ming (11K) (Chinese, Pinyin transliteration and English translation combined in Big 5 format)

Xin Xin Ming (6K) (the same but zipped in case your browser has problems with the text)

The Gates of Paradise (6K)

More Sanskrit Texts

For those who are looking for a real collection of Sanskrit Texts, I would recommend starting with either

ftp://jaguar.cs.utah.edu/private/sanskrit/sanskrit_documents.html (Jaguar Sanskrit Texts Collection)

http://www.uclac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html (Indology List Homepage)

John Richards

jhr@stackpole.screaming.net