  A systematic way of formulating the Batalin-Vilkovisky method of quantization
was obtained in terms of the ``odd time'' formulation. We show that in a class
of gauge theories it is possible to find an ``odd time lagrangian'' yielding,
by a Legendre transformation, an ``odd time hamiltonian'' which is the minimal
solution of the master equation. This constitutes a very simple method of
finding the minimal solution of the master equation which is usually a tedious
task. To clarify the general procedure we discussed its application to
Yang-Mills theory, massive (abelian) theory in Stueckelberg formalism,
relativistic particle and the self-interacting antisymmetric tensor field.
