Buddhist Canon=佛教藏經; Cataloging=目錄; Bibliographical Database=文獻資料庫; Modeling=模型; Topic Maps=主題圖
摘要
Almost from the beginning of the Buddhist tradition in China, cataloguing and recording of the scriptures has been an important activity in the attempt of coming to terms with the vast universe of the Buddhist teachings. In this paper, I will recount the history of the WWW Database of Chinese Buddhist texts (available at http://www.kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~wittern/canwww), which was started with a similar purpose to make use of the electronic medium to get a handle on and a window to explore the scriptures. The problems that have been encountered during the ten years of its ongoing development, the many changes in format, methodology and outlook, its present state, as well as prospects for future development will be the main topic of this paper. This narrative will be framed by the underlying questions of what constitutes a scripture in the Chinese cultural sphere, how different translations of the “same” scriptures are to be treated and how they relate to the “original” of Indian or Central Asian origin. This paper will however go beyond what a traditional scholarly paper is supposed to do and experiment with how a new electronic version of the scriptural catalogues, together with electronic versions of the texts themselves, can be combined to enhance our understanding of the scriptures and the times and people that produced.
The Birth of CANWWW: Experiments with the Electronic Medium 413 What is the Content of a Catalog? 414 The WWW Database of Chinese Buddhist Texts: A Bibliographic Database? 418 WWW Database of Chinese Buddhist Texts as a Topic Map? 418 Divide et Conquere 421 Using the Database 423 Combining the Database with the Electronic Version of the Scriptures 425 Conclusions 428 References 428
