How many words are each of the first 4 Nikayas?

[Dhammanando]

@josephzizys

I am pasting the PTS pali from GRETIL into word to do a word count (or letter count) but the files are too large and my computer crashes.

Word isn’t really robust enough for this sort of thing. Better to use something like Sublime Text or BBEdit.

Of possible interest, an old thread on number -crunching:

On the usefulness or otherwise of the commentaries for establishing canonical texts

There is an idea proposed by some that the Pali commentaries have a crucial role in establishing our earliest readings of the Pali texts. The argument is that all our manuscripts are much later than the commentaries. In cases, therefore, where a commentarial reading is unambiguous, it provides our earliest independent witness for the text. Now, clearly there is something to this. The commentaries are sometimes invaluable in establishing both the reading and the meaning of the Pali text. But we …