Revised site note 1/26/10: This page is left as it was originally with minor modifications to font and background color for ease of reading. My note at the top was from a previous re-work of the site, and I leave it there as part of the history of the site. The new site launch is available here. Navigation links at the bottom follow the original old pathways through the site.
This page serves as a transition moving you in one of two directions. "Know the beginnings" will take you to a demonstration of the idea which gave rise to this web site. It is only a demonstration at this point as constraints of time and hardware, coupled with the current demands of academia and my own needs of resources for my dissertation, have prompted me to embark upon an electronic version of the Nirukta. The graphic above as a whole, apart from Max Muller's personalization of his autograph, will take you to an overview of the technical, conceptual, and academic basis of this site.
"the beginnings" are a hypertexted linkage, in the first 25 hymns
of the Rig Veda, of some 20 or less words which are referential to the self
in Vedic India. My dissertation, then, is to trace the developing terminology
for the self in Vedic literature. My focus will be upon the Rig Veda, the
Atharva Veda, the Aitareya BrAhmaNa, and the Shatapatha BrAhmaNa. Deliberately
or otherwise, I began (cf. previous page) quite by
chance with hypertext linkage of selected verses containing words for the
self in the Rig Veda. The technical aspects did not concern me initially
(I clearly was not ya evam veda when it came to working in cyberspace
with Asian languages!--link to tech links--). As I moved deeper into the
study, Gerand Van Nooten's e-RV came to my attention and the project began
to expand both in potential and in problems. E-texts are the future in academia,
and they are already readically altering what the Humanities considers to
be a text, and also what is considered to be critical inquiry (--landow,
et al links with transition--). My interest, however, lies in the use of
hypertext as a tool of inquiry which allows for real-time duplication of
one's research method by other scholars. In so doing, the Humanities can
stand on equal methodological footing with the so-called "hard sciences."
Linking words related to the self and posting them in this way, I am offering
a model and inviting debate in the ongoing research for my dissertation
and its subsequent studies.
