That’s so wonderful, I am glad to hear it. Our Hindi text projects have, unfortunately become stop and start, so I am always delighted to hear of a new attempt.
To start readings of the suttas would be wonderful, congratulations. We have a few people here who have delved into this area in English, so perhaps you might want to contact them on the forum.
Just so you know, we do plan to offer audio support for sutta readings on SC, but it is not in our immediate scope. All going well, perhaps in 2019. Ultimately, you should be able to say, “Alexa, read me a sutta” and away you go!
I have arrived at Bodhinyana in Perth just a few days ago, where there is an Indian monk, Ven Nibbuto, who helped get these files together some years ago. I haven’t had the chance to chat with him yet, but I’ll see if he’s able to help out.
Thank you, Ajahn Sujato. It will be my great pleasure to connect with Bhante Nibbuto.
Great to know about your sutta reading app plans. I am a beginner in Data Science and would definitely like to keep in touch.
I just opened a few files. It’s quite a different experience reading the suttas in one’s mother tongue. Like Abhinav said, there are some conjoined words and I see some punctuations (matra) missing. I’ll definitely have to keep a dictionary ready as literary Hindi sometimes has difficult words. Also, I’ll be sure to compare with the English versions to verify if the overall theme is faithful.
Btw, have you also contacted the late Bhante Buddharakkhita’s monastery in Bangalore (Mahabodhi Bangalore). The last time I went there in late 2014 they mentioned an ambitious project to translate the Tipitaka to all Indian regional languages.
I’m wondering whether it would be worth doing an editorial project to address these issues; or whether it would be better to try to get more modern translations.
In fact we have. One of the monks here, Ven Bodhidhaja, has stayed there and knows the monastery well. But we have fallen out of touch these past couple of years. Maybe it’s time to contact them again!
I have familiarity with Hindi language and am happy to proofread and correct the existing versions, starting with MN ones that are uploaded on SuttaCentral. Is it possible to get the PDF/scanned versions of the texts (DN and MN) that you shared with the vendor. That will ensure that my corrections remain faithful to Rahul Sankrityayan’s phenomenal work!
I happen to have a software background and so have cloned and examined the sc-data repository and figured out where to make the changes. Sometime this month I should be sending some pull requests.
I’ve also examined the attachments you uploaded on this thread and am thrilled to find that the rest of MN suttas (MN 80 onwards) and all of AN are available as typed docx files. After proof-reading the existing uploads, I plan to add the remaining MN suttas, assign Sutta numbers to the AN docs and create html files for them.
@Abhinav: The Hindi PDFs that you refer to, are they the works of Rahul Sankrityayan (DN, MN) and Bhante Anand Kausalyayan (for AN) or some other authors? If you have the correct authors, could you please share those with me? I can be reached at [my_firstname].[my_lastname]@gmail.com?
Thanks so much! I have been working with Ven Nibbuto of Bodhinyana, who has helped to source and review the Hinsi texts. Unfortunately he has limited internet access. But anyway, let’s get started!
Maybe we could have a chat via skype or something?
I apologize for replying very late since I didn’t visit this forum.
Yes, these are the same authors. Below is the link for various books of Hindi Tipitaka which has been translated from Pali and which I compiled from a website.
Dear Venerable Sujato, I’m bhikkhu Abhibhu from India. I came across this website while I was trying to search whether we have hindi translations of all pali nikayas somewhere. Wow! Your website is a humongous project. I’ve never seen something like it before. Great service for dhamma. Salutes to you and all those who are giving their time and energy for making the dhamma available in all the languages for free and still keep it open source. It’s a dream project which has almost come true.
But I see hindi translations are not complete. There is no Anguttar Nikaya, Samyukta Nikaya, Khuddaka Nikaya added along with other tens of languages. And the discussion for hindi is almost 3-4 years old.
Can I ask what happened? I mean, you gave them to contractors in India to be typed up. What’s the progress there? Sorry, I don’t mean to pry, but the reason I’m asking is because, again, these discussions are years old, and we badly badly need Hindi translations ASAP. There are hundreds of monks, and more than hundreds of thousands lay-people who are waiting for something like this.
Can I ask what’s the most updated status of Samyukta Nikaya in hindi especially? If you have it typed up and proof-read, can you please share, so I can help in making those available to all for free.
You certainly may! Basically, we had the suttas typed up, or at least a large number of them, but we need help from Hindi-language speakers to do the final preparation of suttas. There are a number of tasks that need to be done. Importantly, we need to go through all the smaller suttas and tag them with the SuttaCentral numbers so that they can match up with our system. We’ve had a number of volunteers, but so far the process has not been completed. And of course, we get distracted by all the other things!
But I would have to say, this is a major priority, and I would dearly love to see all the available Hindi suttas released on SuttaCentral. We are also very interested to get other Indian languages too: Marathi, Gujarathi, Malalayam, Tamil, and whatever else.
Thank you Venerable @sujato for kindly replying to me, and humbly explaining.
The reason I’m interested in knowing the status of typed Samyukta Nikaya is because I was going to do it myself somehow, on many friend Bhikkhus request, for their personal kindle devices. And it would take weeks if not months for me to do it alone, apart from time I spend on practicing meditation. Then I saw this.
But I didn’t find Samyukta Nikaya there.
So, if Samyukta Nikaya isn’t typed up at all by contractors, then I’d go ahead and do it myself. And that would come handy not just to us, but SuttaCentral’s hindi future as well.
Vandami Bhante! I appreciate the time you’re giving me.
Well, let me check up on the state of affairs. Not everything is in a typed form, and I can’t remember all the details. I’m a bit pressed for time at the moment, but give me a few days and I’ll try to get back to you.
Meanwhile, I believe there are a number of Hindi translations that we have not typed up, perhaps you could do some of them? I’m thinking of the Dhammapada and other Khuddaka texts, for example.
I don’t have Hindi Dhammapada (translated by Rahul Sankrityayan) with me as of yet. But I do have Sutta Nipata (translated by Bhikkhu Dharmaratna), one of my favorites. Will try to use some OCR tech, typing, and proof-reading beginning with that one. Let’s see what comes out in a course of days or a few weeks.
Thank you venerable. I appreciate your time. And please keep us updated, so some of us can come ahead and help your team in this massive project.
That would be fantastic. May I ask, is this a verse translation or a prose one?
The reason I ask is, it may be possible for you to enter it in our Bilara app. That would be awesome! But it is based of segments of text, where in verse, one segment equals one line. Now, there is no requirement to translate exactly line by line, but if it is a prose rendering it may be hard to fit it in. But if you are interested, perhaps we could give that a go.
Ven. Abhibhu, one of the advantages of segmentation is that we can correlate translations across multiple languages, allowing users to search and view in multiple languages at once. E.g.,
sn12.23: Kiñca, bhikkhave, jānato kiṃ passato āsavānaṃ khayo hoti? sn12.23: For one who knows and sees what? sn12.23: Für jemanden, der was weiß und sieht?
