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PANEL FOUR ABSTRACTS
ABSTRACTS ATLAS OF TAIWANESE RELIGION Cheer Dean (Yuan Heng Graduate School of Buddhism) The preservation of Buddhist treasures has entered the digital era by which once was oral, pattra and printing. We are the pioneers who have been directed toward this digitization in the 21st century. The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) is an association of scholars, a partnership of information system specialists and the scholarly community dedicated to the support of scholarship through technology. Guided by ECAI, there are a whole range of events which marks the changes and shiftings all over the world. Following the traditional mission to preserve those treasures, we are on a position to call for another assembly. Our goal is not just reserving a safe, long-lasting, and convenient database but also identifying the next movement of the digital era. The history and development of Chinese Buddhism in Taiwan including the transmission of Buddhism and Zhajiao to the island, the development of institutions that were or are island-wide in scope and function, the biographies of significant figures, the doctrinal negotiations that have helped shape the identity of Taiwanese Buddhism, the diversified Buddhism, and the Buddhist interactions with government authorities under the three regimes that have ruled the island during four periods : 1) The Ming and Qing Dynasty (1660-1895), 2) The Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945), 3) The Nationalist Regime (1945-2000), and 4) Taiwanese Buddhism of 21st Century (2000- ), have been important part of whole Buddhist World. Like the tradition of major regional Buddhism, Taiwanese Buddhism should be encapsulated, preserved and digitalized. The digital information technology has shown its significance in preservation and illustration of Buddhist treasures to a new level. The initial stage of the Atlas of Taiwanese Religion is to build a Taiwanese Buddhist database for the retrieval of data over the Internet from servers located anywhere in the world. Guided by the ECAI and its paradigm of the historical atlas, research data of all Taiwanese Buddhist sites and related branches are indexed by time (When), place (Where), event (What) and person (Who), using temporally-enabled Google Earth search platform and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. User queries will retrieve and display data in GIS layers on a designed map-based interface, allowing comparisons across discipline, region, time and religion (others will be built after the completion of initial stage). We look forward to seeing these treasures presented in a new way. SURVEY ON THERAVADA BUDDHIST PRACTICE ON AREA INFORMATICS APPROACH - WITH EMPHASIS ON THE TEMPLES IN NORTHEAST THAILAND Mamoru Shibayama, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University Theravada Buddhists who are staying in forest temples (thi phaksong which is one of three kinds of type such as wat, samnaksong, and thi phaksong in Thai is unregistered and is specializing meditation practice in Thailand) move to wander between temples after becoming a monk/novice. Among the Theravadins, becoming a monk/novice and building temple have been voluntarily practiced as merit-making acts which are widely shared in their lives. The temples as hermitage also were built by local people in cooperation with the monk/novice. And it located, in general, at lonesome and forest region in hill lands to keep being on meditation. The relation between the monk/novice and temples shows individual history and aspect of social, cultural, and economical practices in the region. And the monk/novices through their movement and relations with local people are building own network in their lives. Especially, their dynamic movement and activities also can not be seen in the official report and the white paper. Survey on Theravada Buddhist practice above named “Temple Mapping Survey in Time and Space”, which is to clarify regional formation of village community and its surrounding environment with measuring location using GPS, has started at Khon Jiam District, Northeast Thailand in 2006 and 2007 by sociologist of Kyoto University in collaboration with Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. On the other hand, a project on “Development of Area Informatics with Emphasis on Southeast Asia” (Area Informatics, FY2005-2009) has been carried out by a team composed of experts of informatics and area study in Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. The project also started a study on above “Temple Mapping Survey in Time and Space” as one of core projects such as “Urbanization and Historical Mapping in 19-20 centuries in Hanoi, Vietnam” in Area Informatics project from the view point of informatics with emphasis on the following points; (1) To do tracking analysis with geospatial mapping for the movement of monk/novice based on networking of temple. (2) To explore universality and generality of idea and thought common to the motives for becoming a monk/novice and the flow of wandering. (3) To investigate the characteristics of locating of temple with 3D topographical model plus time factor. This project expects that the outcome of study not only elucidates Buddhist practice constituted in the region but also contributes to fill up in the deficiency of official statistics. In addition, it also hopes that the format of the research and the mapping system could be a model for future collaborative surveys between regions and neighboring Theravada countries in future. In this panel, the temple mapping survey and plan of study in the project are introduced. ATLAS OF CHINESE AND HIMALAYAN RELIGIONS Howie Lan, University of California, Berkeley The Atlas of Chinese and Himalayan Religions is a project of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley in collaboration with scholars in China, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and U.S.A. In Phase I of the construction, the focus was on Buddhist sites. More than 18,000 centers have been geo-registered. During this period, Prof. Jiang Wu at the University of Arizona constructed a detailed record of Buddhist monastic lineages. We are now working in Phase II with funding from the Luce Foundation. This year our efforts will be mainly addressed to including Islamic sites and enhancing the Buddhist material with information for many of the locations. For example, all references to Buddhism and to monasteries in the twenty-five dynastic histories will be geo-registered and linked to the sites in the atlas map. Later, the Christian sites will be added along with Daoist and Jewish information. When the Phase II is completed in 2010, the atlas will contain thousands of religious sites in a format that will allow them to be used in animated maps by date of establishment. As more material is added to each site, the atlas should become a standard reference work for online research. |
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