The project of the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (usually referred to by the acronym DDB) was initiated by Charles Muller (a specialist in East Asian Buddhism) during his first year of graduate school--upon his realization of the dearth of lexicographical works available for both East Asian Buddhism and classical Chinese. Since that time, he has continued to compile the terminology from the texts that he has studied and translated, extending for almost twenty years. Buddhism is a dharmic, non-theistic religion, which is also a philosophy and a system of psychology. ... Charles Muller is a translator specializing in East Asian philosophical texts. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ...

In 1995, with the advent of the Internet, Muller converted his data set from the word processor files in which they were originally stored, into HTML format, and placed them on his web site, with the aim of making his work-in-progress available to a broad audience, and to see if it would be possible to take advantage of the WWW to encourage collaboration in the project. 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A word processor (also more formally known as a document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of viewable or printed material. ... HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. ... A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. ... Graphic representation of the world wide web around Wikipedia The World Wide Web (WWW, or simply Web) is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). ...

Both aims have been realized. Soon after setting this lexicon on the web, 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 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, and then XML. In 2001, with the help of humanities computing XML specialist Michael Beddow, the dictionaries were reset on the web in XML format with a search engine, which is the arrangement being used at present. Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is a metalanguage in which one can define markup languages for documents. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. ... 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The DDB, at the time of this writing, contains over 38,000 entries, including Buddhist terms, texts, schools, temples, and persons. Entries range in scope from short glossary type, to full-length encyclopedic articles. Now supported by dozens of collaborators with specialist's expertise in a wide range of areas in Buddhist studies, the expansion rate of the DDB has been exponential in recent years. A special dimension of both dictionaries is their usage of XML attributes to accredit contributors for their work at the level entry segments (XML "nodes") 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 hyperlinked. Unlike Wikipedia however, editorial privileges to the DDB are limited to accredited specialists in the field of Buddhist Studies, in order to avoid inaccuracies and various sectarian distortions. Node may mean: Node (botany), the place on a plant stem where a leaf is attached Node (physics), a spatial locus along a standing wave where the wave has minimal amplitude Node (networking), a device connected to a network, such as a computer or router Node (computer science), a basic...

External links

• www.buddhism-dict.net