Operating manual for Pali Tipitaka – web version

The List of Volumes page

The first screen shows four buttons viz. Vinayapitaka, Suttapitaka, Abhidhammapitaka & Anna. On clicking any of these buttons, a list volumes under each of the pitakas is displayed in the lower portion of the screen.

If you see junk characters in the list of volumes, it is possible that you have not installed the special font, ‘VriRomanPali DD’. To install this font, download the font file from the web site. Go to Control Panel and select Fonts option. Here, under the File menu, click on Install New Font. Select the font downloaded from the web site for installation. Now, if you reload the Pali Tipitaka web page, you should be able to see the volume names properly.

On clicking on any of the volume names, the appropriate volume will open. In this page, there are three parts provided.

The Volume page

In the first part, you will find the buttons Home, Select volume, Table of contents & Help. Clicking on Home will take you back to the Home page of the site. Clicking on Select volume button will take you back to the list of volumes page. Clicking on Table of contents button will open the Table of contents for this volume in the third part of this page. Help will open this operating manual for reference in a new window. After reading the Help, close the browser window to go back to the Volume page.

The second part displays the name of the volume, chapter name & section number that is being currently viewed. On clicking the Chapter List Box, you will have a list of chapters for this volume. You can select any of the chapters to view. The chapter selected will be displayed in the third part of the screen. Similarly, the Section List Box displays the section numbers available for the current chapter in this volume. You can move to any section in the current chapter by selecting one of the section numbers. Each chapter has been divided into small sections for faster download time.

The third part in the screen is the actual volume page. When you first select a volume, the first page of the volume is displayed in this part of the screen. On every page, you have two buttons viz. Previous Section & Next Section, both on the top & the bottom of the page. Using these buttons, you can move onto the previous or next sections in the volume. When you move to the previous or next sections, the chapter name and the section number of the current page will be appropriately displayed in the second part of the screen.

At any point in time, you can use the buttons in the first part of the screen for Home, Select volume, Table of contents or Help.

Table of contents

This displays the main chapter headings or the sub-sections within a chapter. The sub-sections are indented appropriately. A single indentation represents a sub-section of a chapter whereas a double indentation represents a sub-sub-section. Alongside each entry in the table of contents, the section number where this entry can be found, is also displayed. Besides, the VRI & PTS page numbers can be seen against each entry in the table.

In some books, however, VRI or PTS or both the page numbers may not be available. In such cases, the columns will not be displayed and a message is displayed on the top of the Table of contents that the appropriate page number is not available for this volume.

You can open any of the chapter or sub-section by clicking on the name in the table of contents.