General News

DSBC Project will attend the International Buddhist Conference on the United Nations Day of Vesak (May 4-6) in Bangkok, Thailand. The theme of the conference is 'Buddhist approach to global crisis'. And sub-themes consist of: (1) Buddhist Approach to environment crisis (2) Buddhist approach to economic crisis (3) Buddhist approach to Political conflict and peace development (4) IABU workshop (5) Common Buddhist text project and (5) Buddhist E-resources and network.

Miroj Shakya, DSBC Project Manager, will be participating as a panelist of the workshop on "Buddhist Electronic Resources and Networks." Buddhists from 80 countries are participating Vesak 2009 at Thailand. For details, please visit http://www.icundv.com/

Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon Project will be representing University of the West in the 37th annual international conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) to be held from March 22-26, 2009 in Williamsburg, Virginia in the United States organized by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the University of Virginia.

The conference theme will be “Making History Interactive,” which will be reflected in both the conference activities and the unique venue. Miroj Shakya, DSBC Project Manager and UWest PhD student will be presenting paper titled “A Sanskrit Buddhist Canon for the 21st Century.” For details, please visit: http://www.ecai.org/Activities/2009CAA/caa2009.html

I am extremely happy to know that the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon Project is broadening and applying the latest computer technology, thereby freely providing users to read and search through the UWest sponsored website. We began to support the digitizing of the Sanskrit Buddhist Canon since the year 2003. During this short period of time, this project has established its identity in the world. I wish great success for this project. Sanskrit Buddhist texts are extremely important for all the Buddhists. Now, for the first time in history, these basic valuable texts of Indian Buddhism are accessible and freely downloadable via the internet. The availability of all the Sanskrit Buddhist texts online will be an important milestone in Buddhist scholarship, and will make the project immensely useful to educators and students.

I would like to thank Dr. Lewis Lancaster, Former President of University of the West, Dr. Allen Huang, President of the University of the West, Min Bahadur Shakya, Director of Nagarjuna Institute, Nepal, and the DSBC staff for their hard work in bringing this dream project into reality.

                                                                                          Hsing Yun

DSBC participated in the the GIS-IDEAS, PNC and ECAI 2008 Joint International Conferences held in Ta Quang Buu Library, Hanoi University of Technology, Ha Noi, Vietnam from December 4th to 6th. Mr. Min Bahadur Shakya and Miroj Shakya jointly presented a paper on "Towards Comprehensive Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon." The theme of this year』s conference is: Information Technology for a Creative and Sustainable Humanosphere. There are 211 participants coming from Algeria, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom. Please click the News (courtesy PNClink.org)

Ven Dr. Jue Ji, recently appointed as a DSBC Project Supervisor and she is the Director of the Institute for Research and Advanced Studies in Chinese Buddhism, University of the West. She obtained her PhD at Center of Buddhist Studies, HKU.  She was the Associate Director at the Study of Humanistic Buddhism, CUHK in 2006-2008.  Her academic interest includes the history of Modern Chinese Buddhism, Contemporary Social Issues and Buddhism, the movement of Humanistic Buddhism in Contemporary China, etc.

DSBC Project has participated in the UN Vesak Day Celebration in Hanoi, Viet Nam, May 15-17. Mr. Min Bahadur Shakya presented a paper on "A 21st Century Tripitaka: The Development of the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon." The UNDV 2008 is hosted by the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and co-organised by the IOC and the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha.

The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI), in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of the West, has formed the Sanskrit Web Working Group (SWWG), with a goal of increasing the quantity, uniformity, utility, and longevity of Sanskrit and other Indic texts on the Web.  As a first step, the Working Group is developing appropriate standards, practices, and tools, using the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon Website as a test case.