CBETA celebrates its fifth birthday

By Dr. Christian Wittern

The Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) presented the latest version of its Electronic Tripitaka in celebration of the fifth anniversary of its founding to the interested public in Taipei on February 15, 2003.

After presentations by Christian Wittern and Tu Aming (executive manager), highlighting future perspectives and past achievements of the Association, details of its latest version were presented by Ven. Huimin (director), Zhou Bangxin and Wang Zhipan. The major achievement of this new version is the integration of the text-critical notes of the Taisho Tripitaka, using the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) XML based markup. As was demonstrated in this event, this allows through an ordinary browser interface the reconstruction of different source witnesses of a text with the click of a mouse. For further reference, the original text of the Taisho footnotes and a table that enumerates the characters found in the different witnesses can be displayed in a different window. Participants were given a compilation of this version on CD-ROM for the purpose of testing it; a release of a further developed version to a broader audience is planned for the second half of this year. Updated versions will also be available at the CBETA website at http://www.cbeta.org. It was further announced that a first release of some volumes of the Supplement to the Manji Canon (also known as Xuzangjing or Zokuzokyo) are planned for the end of this year.

During the break between presentations, Ven. Hengching as founding director and the current CBETA director, Ven. Huimin made three prostrations on behalf of the past, present and future users of the CBETA texts to thank those who made it possible to produce the electronic version and cut the excellent birthday cake, which was subsequently shared among the guests.

In the concluding discussions, users and contributers to the project exchanged views in sometimes very emotional statements and considered possibilities for further development, not only of the texts itself, but also of new environments to use them (for example handheld and wireless devices) and new applications and tools for better accessing them.

Christian Wittern