| Lawson English 2006-09-21, 8:25 am |
| http://www.mum.edu/TheReview/#9
Ph.D. Grad Puts All Vedic Literature on the Internet
As part of his dissertation research, recent Ph.D. grad Peter Freund,
the University’s videotape librarian, has put online the world’s most
comprehensive and orderly collection of Vedic Literature written in the
Sanskrit Devanagari script.
The collection comprises almost 60,000 pages of Vedic texts, including
rare, sought-after, or out-of-print publications. Scholars and libraries
from around the world contributed to the project by providing texts. Dr.
Freund worked on the project as part of his dissertation for a Ph.D. in
Maharishi Vedic Science(SM).
The Vedic Literature website orders the previously scattered Vedic texts
according to the principles of ancient Vedic Science revived by
Maharishi, who first proposed a reading program in 1991 to allow
students to read the Vedic Literature in Sanskrit in a proper sequence.
Maharishi predicted the profound benefits that would result, and these
have been verified by the experiences of students.
The main goal of the website is to smooth the progress of the Vedic
Literature reading curriculum. Previously, students faced a difficult
task to gather or borrow all the texts and to get them in time to be
read in sequence.
Approximately 311 texts were identified by Maharishi as the essential
parts of a reading program. So far 288 of these texts have been
assembled and most are online. A small number of texts still need to be
assembled or prepared, including rare texts in the Grantha script that
need to be converted to Devanagari.
The online collection shows an at-a-glance structure of the Vedic
Literature with links to downloadable PDF files. The overview page has
links for each of the 40 branches of the Vedic Literature, which in turn
give each individual quality of a branch and how it correlates with the
functioning of the physiology, as explained in the profound work of His
Majesty Raja Ram.
The Vedic Literature collection can be viewed at www.mum.edu/vedicreserve
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