Introduction Khmer         Dictionary         Analysis         Corpus         Bitext         Images

Classical Southeast Asian Texts and Reference Southeast Asia's golden age of epigraphy extends from roughly the 5th through the 15th centuries. The SEAclassics Library of epigraphic texts, Indic and epigraphic dictionaries, and research-oriented software tools will, for the first time, make this widely scattered body of work accessible to the international scholarly community.    The SEAclassics Library will make a significant contribution to scholarly practice, presenting these texts as a unified regional resource, using a consistent transcription system, and allowing sub-corpora to be defined by time or location as well as language or culture. For the first time it will be possible to track references to goods, geographic features, or cultural practices, or to trace specific terms derived from Sanskrit or Pali - not to mention the developement of language itself - throughout the region's interlocking cultural spaces. Project Scope SEAclassics' initial focus will be on the mainland Southeast Asian inscriptions, including Cham, Mon, Khmer, Pyu, Burmese, and Tai texts. These texts are seldom available in the US, even in print form, and material is often unavailable in English. We will create a uniform reference framework that provides access to:  -  on-line text corpora, based on the best available published transcriptions (and transliterate those, like the Sukhothai texts, typically available only in modern local orthography).  -  lexicographic references to the inscriptions, including Jenner's Angkorian and pre-Angkorian dictionaries, and Shorto's dictionary of the Mon inscriptions (and translate those, like the Sukhothai glossaries, that are not available in English).  -  the standard Indic references, including Turner's authoritative Comparative Dictionary of Indo-Aryan Languages, Burrow & Emeneau's Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, and Monier-Williams' and Rhys-Davids' classic Sanskrit and Pali dictionaries. Project Implementation SEAclassics will be standards-based, and built along lines similar to EpiDoc-based resources like the US Epigraphy project, or the ad hoc Perseus project. However, we will develop considerably more sophisticated tools for:  -  corpus analysis, providing functionality for searches by the content of word definitions (e.g. all 'gold' words), or for reverse searches by Sanskrit or Pali root, or for comparing the content of sub-corpora (e.g. comparing the lexicon of Thailand's contested Inscription One against the rest of the Sukhothai corpus).  -  linguistic analysis, including tools for collocate analysis, exicography, and study of larger-scale syntactic features.  -  dictionary reference, including intelligent approximation and 'assisted search' algorithms, and the ability to search Indic references using modern SEA orthographies.    We do not anticipate wide access to images of the inscriptions at this point, but will build in functionality necessary to manage an image library tied to the searchable text corpus. Nor are reliable English readings of the texts are generally available; we will, however, create bitext corpus and search functionality. Project Audience Epigraphic inscriptions help tell the story of the Southeast Asian art, ecology, and economy, and of the region's political, religious, and cultural development. SEAclassics resources will find an international scholarly audience, including researchers in linguistics (including historical and comparative lingusitics), lexicography (both modern and historical), epigraphy and philology, history, political science, anthropology, art history, and religion.    There is a tremendous need for the SEAclassics library, particularly within the United States. Despite the efforts of eight SEA National Research Centers, and collaborative groups like CORMOSEA (the national SEA libraries council) and CAPSEA (the Library of Congress-organized cooperative acquisitions program for SEA), Southeast Asian Studies has been in steady decline since the 1970's. By helping to level the extraordinarily steep learning curve required to do research - even modern SEA has ten or more different, widely used non-Roman writing systems - the SEAclassics library wll help prompt a new kind of regionally oriented SEA scholarship.    We do not wish to oversell SEAclassics - we will not re-evaluate the existing transcriptions or write new dictionaries. We will, however, make a century of scholarship, now scattered and available only in paper form, as accessible as equivalent resources for Greek and Latin. In addition, we will make a substantial contribution to accurately documenting both classical and modern Indic etymology throughout the region. Advisory Board Preliminary contacts make it clear that we will have no difficulty attracting leading international scholars to the SEAclassics advisory / consulting board. For example, Prof. Philip Jenner, has agreed to let the SEAclassics Library distribute his pre-Angkor and Angkorian dictionaries, and has offered to help move the project forward in any way possible. There has been an equally enthusiastic response to the prospect of improved access to Sanskrit/Pali/Dravidian lexicographic resources, above and beyond their relevance to Southeast Asia. A complete board, with experts in all relevant areas, will be in place before we make any formal funding requests. Institutional Context The Center for Research in Computational Linguistics (CRCL Inc., a US 501(c)3 nonprofit) is equally well-placed. CRCL has extensive experience building research-ready on-line scholarly resources. For example, CRCL is implementor and co-sponsor (with the US Dep't of Education) of the SEAlang Library of modern bilingual dictionaries and mono/bilingual text corpora, and prepared HL Shorto's unpublished Dictionary of Comparative Mon-Khmer (Dr. Paul Sidwell, Editor) for print and electronic publication.    The SEAlang Library will also play a significant supporting role. Between 2006 - 2009, ten leading Southeast Asian bilingual dictionaries, including Haas for Thai, Headley '77 and '97 for Khmer, Shorto for Mon, etc. have been made freely accessible on-line. These resources will facilitate use of the SEAclassics Library, which will in turn allow for much-needed improvements to modern reference materials. We also have every reason to expect that the international cooperation we received on the SEAlang Library, including support from both institutions (including the Ecole francais d'Etreme Orient, by far the best-established institution in Southeast Asia) and professional organizations (including the Committee on Research Materials for Southeast Asia) will extend to the SEAclassics Library as well.