Digital Dictionary of Buddhism
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The project of the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (usually referred to by the acronym DDB) was initiated by
Charles Muller A. Charles Muller (born September 19, 1953) is an academic specializing in Korean Buddhism and East Asian Yogacara, having published numerous books and articles on these topics. He is a resident of Japan, currently teaching at Musashino Univers ...
, a specialist in East Asian
Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
, during his first year of graduate school when he realized the dearth of lexicographical works available for both
East Asian Buddhism East Asian Buddhism or East Asian Mahayana is a collective term for the schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism that developed across East Asia which follow the Chinese Buddhist canon. These include the various forms of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vi ...
and
classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...
. Since that time, he has continued to compile the terminology from the texts that he has studied and translated, extending for almost twenty years. In 1995, with the advent of the Internet, Muller converted his data set from the
word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...
files in which they were originally stored, into
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
format, and placed them on his web site, to make his work-in-progress available to a broad audience, and see if it would be possible to take advantage of the
WWW The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
to encourage collaboration in the project. Numerous scholars came forth to offer assistance in the form of both technical implementation and content contributions. Additionally, the project was able to secure a series of
JSPS The is an Independent Administrative Institution in Japan, established for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of science in all fields of the natural and social sciences and the humanities.JSPSweb page History The Japan Society for ...
grants from 1997–2003, which greatly hastened the expansion of the coverage of both works. During this period, the storage format of the dictionaries was changed to
SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates": * Declarative: Markup should des ...
, and then
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
. In 2001, with the help of
Humanities Computing Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analy ...
XML specialist
Michael Beddow Michael Beddow (3 September 1947 – 2 September 2019) was a British scholar of German literature, who was also a renowned expert in the application of XML technologies to web representations of literary corpora, and who was deeply involved w ...
, the dictionaries were placed on the web in XML format with a search engine. The DDB, as of July 2019, contains over 73,000 entries, including Buddhist terms, texts, schools, temples, and persons. Entries range from short glossary type, to full-length encyclopedic articles. Supported by dozens of collaborators with specialist expertise in many areas of Buddhist studies, the expansion rate of the DDB has been exponential in recent years. A special dimension of the dictionaries is their usage of XML attributes to accredit contributors for their work at the level entry segments (XML "
node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics *Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines, ...
s") rather than only at the level of full entries. Being an ongoing digital project, entries and nodes of the work can be revised and expanded by their original authors, and supplemented by the contributions of others. Also, being a digital compilation, it is full-text searchable, and entries are
hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wit ...
ed. Editorial privileges are limited to accredited specialists in the field of Buddhist Studies, in order to avoid inaccuracies and various sectarian distortions. Very unusually for an online dictionary, a username and password is required for all access; causal users are still required log in as "guest". Guest users of the dictionary are restricted to ten searches per day. This is a major limitation on the usefulness of the dictionary for those who have no way to earn access by contributing entries.


References

* Muller, Charles; Nagasaki K, Soulat J (2012)
The XML-Based DDB: The DDB Document Structure and the P5 Dictionary Module; New Developments of DDB Interoperation and Access
Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 25, 105-125 * Muller, Charles; Beddow, Michael (2002)
Moving into XML Functionality: The Combined Digital Dictionaries of Buddhism and East Asian Literary Terms
Journal of Digital Information 3 (2)


External links


www.buddhism-dict.net
Buddhist literature {{www-stub