Retrodigitalisierung und Digitale Bereitstellung des Sanskrit-Wörterbuchs

The Sanskrit Dictionary of the Buddhist Texts from the Turfan Finds (SWTF), compiled at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony and published in print between 1972 and 2017 in a total of 29 volumes, is a unique research tool for the study of Turfan texts and the analysis of Buddhist Sanskrit literature. As no digital version is available, the practical use of the lexicographical work accumulated over four decades is significantly limited. Furthermore, scholars in countries of the Global South, such as India and Southeast Asia, are largely excluded from access to the dictionary, as purchasing the printed version is not an option for them due to financial constraints.

The project aims to retrospectively digitize the SWTF and publish it online within the Trier Dictionary Network (Trierer Wörterbuchnetz). Volumes 1–8 and 21–29, which are not yet available in digital form, will be transcribed using the double-keying method and merged with the XML typesetting data for volumes 9–20, which were acquired from the publisher in 2010. The complete text will then be enriched with lexicographical and structural markup in accordance with the TEI P5 Guidelines and the TEI Lex-0 standard, using rule-based scripts.

The digital edition will provide search functionalities that are not possible in the printed version, including queries by part of speech and word-formation patterns, terminological searches for Buddhist technical terms and their German equivalents,  as well as the first-ever consolidation of the supplements and corrections, which are scattered across four different sections in the print edition. Through the participation of the Trier Center for Digital Humanities (TCDH) in the Lexical Resources Task Area of the NFDI consortium Text+, the SWTF will be integrated into the Federated Content Search and made accessible via open interfaces and persistent identifiers. The digital edition will be published under a CC BY-SA license.