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PANEL TWO ABSTRACTS
VISUALIZING BUDDHISM IN TIME AND PLACE Jeanette Zerneke, University of California, Berkeley ECAI has worked with affiliates for over 10 years to develop Cultural Atlases and methods of visualizing cultural information in the context of time and place. Now we have begun to explore the possibilities of using the new digital earth systems such as Google Earth to visualize cultural information and history. This presentation will focus on examples using Buddhist information and history. Several ways to visualize Buddhist materials will be included. ECAI has also developed a Cultural Atlas Portal to bring together separate projects into a single interface. A similar integration of projects focusing on Buddhist history will be demonstrated. This integration may begin to provide a new integrated way to view the historical development of Buddhism. DOCUMENTATION OF BUDDHIST CENTERS IN TAMIL NADU Dr.D.Dayalan, Archaeological Survey of India Buddhism came to South India during the period of Emperor Asoka (c. 273-236 BC). The rock edicts of him found in the bordering regions of South India invariably refer to the Buddhist dharma. However, the prevalence of Buddhism in the Tamil country till 4th-5th century AD is not attested by any material evidences. The reason may be that consistent with pan-Indian usage, perishable materials like wood and brick had been used for the construction of secular as well as religious edifices of the early times. However, the discovery of large number of stone objects and bronzes datable to 5th-6th century and onwards at various places all over Tamil Nadu indicate the wide prevalence of Buddhism in the Tamil country. It appears that Buddhism had a flourishing faith in some period and has been patronized by the local people and the merchants and perhaps the rulers as well. On the basis of the clue from the inscriptions, accounts given in indigenous and foreign texts and place names, a host of scholars and others explored all over Tamil Nadu and plotted a large number of places yielding Buddhist relics through out the state. The outstanding excavations at Kaveripumpattinam (Lat.11012’50” N; Long. 790 52’ 50” E) by the Archaeological Survey of India had brought to light the remains of a Vihara of 4th -5th century and a Buddhist temple of 6th century or little later. Nagapattinam, another important Buddhist centre in Tamil Nadu appears to have been a centre of Buddhism for a long time. Hundreds of Buddhist bronzes were produced here right from 9th century AD to the 17th century. The mass production of bronzes in Nagapattinam make this place an important centre Buddhist bronzes in India and large number of Buddhist bronzes were exported from here to various other Buddhist centres in the country. As a result of maritime contacts between South India and South-east Asian countries, there existed in Nagapattinam a colony of Buddhist and also Buddhist temple erected out of the subsidies granted by the Sailendra kings. During the Chola period there exist at least a vihara and two temples known as Sudamani varma vihara, Rajaraja Perumballi and Rajendra Perumballi or Chola Perumballi. The Smaller Laden plates of Kulottunga Chola I record the gifts to both the Pallis. During the reign of Pallava king Narasimha varman-II (8th century), a Buddhist temple was constructed here under the request of the Chinese king for the sake of Chinese Buddhists who came to Nagapattinam from China for trade. The present paper deals in detail about the documentation of the Buddhist vestiges such as excavated remains, sculptures and bronzes, inscriptions and paintings in Tamil Nadu, carried out by the author. The documentation includes-the detail of the location, nature, description, date and status of the relics, detail photography, preparation of location map of all the Buddhist sites, published References, etc. EVENTWEB FOR DISSEMINATING CULTURAL HISTORY Ramesh Jain, Department of Computer Science, University of California, EventWeb allows creation of independent events, associate all information and experiences associated with it, and link them to other relevant events. An event can be created by anybody and then like a multimedia wiki, anybody could contribute information and experiences to this event. The creator of the event as well as other users can link an event to other related events. Events can be searched based on their location, time, type, associated information and experiences. This allows people to understand relationships among events, gain insights among the cases and effects of events, and tell stories about events and relationships among them. We have developed a system called Seraja for providing tools to implement EventWeb. This platform has been used for some time in our group. Seraja can be effectively used to provide a web-based platform to create events in cultural history by scholars. All relevant event information in the form of text, photos, videos, and three-dimensional data can be associated with these events by scholars in different places. Causal and other types of links among these events could also be created by scholars and analysts. This web-based information can then be easily accessed and utilized by people in any part of the world. In this paper, we will present basic concepts behind the platform and then explain how to use it fro creating Cultural History EventWeb. |
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