From: bosak@netcom.com (Jon Bosak)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Electronic eastern religious texts
Date: 8 Nov 92 17:37:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: ogicse.45662
Distribution: world
Organization: Netcom, a Commercial Internet Service in San Jose

In response to my recent inquiry seeking electronic versions of
eastern religious texts, I have received a very helpful message from
Reid Fossey referring me to the anonymous ftp archive at
coombs.anu.edu.au.  The collection, which ranges over the social
sciences generally, contains many interesting pieces relating to
religion, including a number of articles in English on Zen practice
and some important Buddhist works in their original languages.

Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any large canonical works
translated into English.  It seems that I will have to wait until some
dedicated person or group takes it upon themselves to scan in and
proofread older English translations of the Dhammapada, the
Bhagavad-Gita, etc. in the way that other volunteers have done for the
Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Quran.

Since the coombspapers archive will be of interest to many readers of
this list, I have taken the liberty of reproducing its README file
(lightly edited) below.  Please note the list of North American mirror
sites given toward the end of the file.  I am assuming that the
Moderator will delete this information if it has appeared here
recently.

Jon Bosak
bosak@netcom.com

##########################################################################

[Last updated: 30 June 1992]
==========================================================================
ABOUT THE COOMBSPAPERS DATA BANK - the ANONYMOUS FTP ARCHIVE
				on the node  coombs.anu.edu.au

COOMBSPAPERS Social Sciences Research Data Bank was established on 3
December 1991 to act as a world's leading electronic repository of the
social science & humanities research papers and documents. These
include offprints, departmental publications, specialist
bibliographies, directories, abstracts of theses and other high-grade
research material produced (or deposited) at the Research School of
Pacific Studies and Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, Canberra.

In addition, COOMBSPAPERS Data Bank is intended to serve also as a
major Australian electronic repository of quality research materials
dealing with the SouthEast and NorthEast Asian areas, as well as
Buddhism, Taoism and other oriental religions.

Its collection expands at a brisk pace and is available to Internet
users world-wide 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week via the anonymous ftp, gopher
and fetch procedures.
==========================================================================
Since the 21st of May 92 selected Coombspapers materials have also
been used to form a series of the WAIS [Wide Area Information Servers]
specialist databases named: ANU-Aboriginal-Studies,
ANU-Asian-Religions, ANU-Pacific-Linguistics, ANU-Pacific-Manuscripts,
ANU-SocSci-Netlore, ANU-SSDA-Catalogues and ANU-Thai-Yunnan
respectively.
==========================================================================
The COOMBSPAPERS Data Bank is maintained and administered by the
Coombs Computing Unit, RSSS/RSPacS.

Currently (June 92) the electronic research collection comprises 325
ASCII files totalling approx. 12.8 Mb of data.

Within the COOMBSPAPERS collection there are materials contributed by
the following departments and units of the RSSS/RSPacS

Aboriginal History Journal,
Anthropology,
Asian History,
Australian Dictionary of Biography, 
Cartography Unit,
Contemporary China Centre,
Coombs Computing Unit,
Demography,
Economic History,
Economic Policy Research Centre, 
Federalism Research Centre, 
International Relations,
Linguistics,
Modern Economic History of Southeast Asia Project,
National Centre for Development Studies,
Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, 
Peace Research Centre,
Philosophy, 
Political Science, 
Political and Social Change,
Prehistory,
RSPacS Director's Unit,
RSSS Director's Unit,
Social Science Data Archives,
Strategic and Defence Studies Centre,
Thai-Yunnan Project,
Urban Research Project. 

In addition there are also materials obtained/contributed via the
network from/by other institutions, including:

Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archives, Australian Institute of
	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra;
Brisbane Zen Group, Brisbane, Australia; 
Buddha discussion group LISTSERV;
Chinese-Japanese-Korean Computing and Database Facility (CJK-CDF),
	Cornell Univ., USA;
CIPSH (UNESCO) "Red Book" Project on Endangered Languages;
Halifax Zen Center,  Halifax, Canada;
Humanist discussion group LISTSERV;
Humanities Computing Facility, Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, USA; 
Humanities Research Centre, Australian Nat. University, Canberra;
Institute for Global Communications, which hosts EcoNet, PeaceNet, and
	ConflictNet, San Francisco, USA.
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, ANU, Canberra
Oxford Text Archive, Oxford, United Kingdom;
Network Information Centre, SURANet, USA;
Sociology Dept., Univ. of  Newcastle, Australia;
Sydney Zen Centre, Sydney, Australia;
Thinking Machines Corp., Menlo Park, CA,  94025
Univ. of Texas, USA;
Univ. of Washington, Seattle, USA;
USENET newsgroup soc.religion.eastern.
==========================================================================
Details of the current holdings of the COOMBSPAPERS collection are
given in its INDEX file. They are also available via TELNET from one
of the ARCHIE world-wide databases of files kept by the anonymous FTP
sites (e.g. archie.au in Australia, archie.ans.net in USA [NY],
archie.mcgill.ca in Canada or archie.funet.fi in Finland).

Since 10th April 1992 the COOMBSPAPERS files are fully mirrored (on
daily basis) by wuarchive.wustl.edu site located at the Washington
University, St. Louis, USA [sub-directory /doc/coombspapers].

Since 10th April 1992 the COOMBSPAPERS files are fully mirrored (on
weekly basis) by ftp.uu.net site located at the US national gateway,
California, USA.  [sub-directory /doc/coombspapers].

Since 16th April 1992 the COOMBSPAPERS files are fully mirrored (on
irregular basis) by capella.eetech.mcgill.ca site located at the
McGill Univ., Canada.  [sub-directory /wuarchive/doc/coombspapers].

Since 28th April 1992 the COOMBSPAPERS files are fully mirrored (on
weekly basis) by samba.acs.unc.edu site located at the Univ. of North
Carolina, USA.  [sub-directory pub/wuarchive/doc/coombspapers].

These arrangements allow people in North America and Europe to fetch
copies of articles without having to traverse the overloaded
trans-Pacific link.
==========================================================================
Documents in the COOMBSPAPERS Data Bank are kept as ASCII (plain text)
files. Some of the larger documents are stored in a compressed form to
save the storage space and minimise network transmission times. All
materials are freely available for noncommercial use by individual
scholars, computer conferences, and libraries linked to the AARNET/
INTERNET and other academic networks and can be acquired world-wide
from a sub-directory /coombspapers via anonymous FTP on the node
coombs.anu.edu.au

Not all materials forming the COOMBSPAPERS electronic research
collection have to originate within the ANU's Research Schools of
Social Sciences and Pacific Studies. In fact, any high grade social
sciences/ humanities research material which is not already
copyrighted by someone else may be deposited with this data bank.
Scholars and researchers from all over the world are WARMLY INVITED to
send their electronic documents for the safekeeping and dissemination
by the Coombspapers Data bank. This can be done by lodging (via the
FTP) an ASCII file with the /coombspapers/inboundpapers sub-directory
at the coombs.anu.edu.au address. Please note that the Coombs
Computing Unit, reserves the right to exclude from the data bank
collection any document found to be unsuitable because of its scope,
content, format or size. For further details please consult the
INVITATION file.

Any inquires related to the above matters should be directed to:

The Coombspapers Administrator, 
Dr T. Matthew Ciolek	ph +61 6 249 2214,
or  Mr David Ritchie	ph +61 6 249 3102,
Coombs Computing Unit, RSPacS/RSSS,
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 
e-mail (INTERNET) coombspapers@coombs.anu.edu.au