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On May 30, 1988, Visakha Puja Day,
the Digital Tipitaka Development Team under the Mahidol University Computing
Center, Thailand, announced the completion of its project to record the 45
volumes of the Pali Tipitaka onto computer, together with the development of an
application program, BUDSIR (BUDdhist Scriptures Information Retrieval), for
searching it. BUDSIR could search and find every occurrence of every word,
sentence, and saying of the Buddha occurring in the Tipitaka promptly, precisely
and comprehensively. It was the world’s first digital edition of the
Tipitaka
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Three years later, in compliance with the wishes of his Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great, 70 volumes of the Atthakatha (Commentary) were added to the database, and three years from then, in August 1994, the Tipitaka and Atthakatha, numbering 115 volumes in all, were recorded on CD-ROM and a more efficient search program, BUDSIR IV, was developed. |
Then in September, 1996, BUDSIR IV for Windows has been developed so that the program can work in a Windows environment. BUDSIR IV for Windows works much that same as previous version of the program, with fast, accurate and, most importantly, comprehensive search capability. With the Graphic User Interface (GUI), it can display information from Tipitaka and Atthakatha in up to eight movable and resizable windows at a time, and the text size and color can be changed as the user wishes. The program has also been given sound capabilities so that Pali passages can be read out by the computer. |
Last year (1997), it marked another great step forward in the development of the project with the successful completion of the following :
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BUDSIR Publication |
For the CD-ROM publication, so far 4 CDs have been produced and distributed as follows:
Year |
Product Name |
1994 |
BUDSIR on
CD-ROM (in Thai-scripts) BUDSIR on CD-ROM (in Romanized scripts) |
1996 |
BUDSIR for Windows (in Romanized scripts) |
1997 |
BUDSIR for Thai Translation. |
The BUDSIR Data Content |
The BUDSIR for Windows contains 115 volumes, or 50,189 pages of text. The data can be divided into two groups as follows :
1. The Pali Tipitaka, 45 volumes.
2. The Atthakatha and other important scriptures, 70 volumes.+
The data from each volume was
entered twice and verified by a computer program which pin-pointed any
discrepancies between the two versions, which were then corrected until the two
versions were completely identical. This was done by eighty typists, each
working at a rate of thirty Pali words a minute, or on average 15 pages a
day.
For the BUDSIR for Thai Translation,
it contains 160 volumes in all, consisting of 115 volumes in Pali text as in the
product of BUDSIR for Windows, and 45 volumes of Tipitaka in Thai translation
which is convenient for comparison with the original Pali source.
Hardware Requirements |
To perform gracefully, BUDSIR essentially needs equipment along the following specification :
- An IBM–type PC computer or compatible with a Pentium CPU,
- At lease 16 MB of RAM,
- Monitor, keyboard and mouse,
- CD-ROM drive,
- Hard disk with at least 30 MB of free space (for collating results),
- A 3.5”, 1.44 MB floppy drive,
- A 9 or 24 pin dot-matrix printer or laser printer,
- A sound card, such as Sound Blaster 16, and speakers (optional),
- Windows 95 or higher, Windows NT.
For Macintosh users, BUDSIR for Windows can also be run on Macintosh computers, e.g., Power PC, etc., with the SoftWindows emulator program and the OS version 7.0 or higher.
The Mahidol University Computing
Center is proud to have played a part in the continued preservation of the
treasury of priceless wisdom that is the Buddhist Scriptures. We have many other
projects to implement in the future to aid in the study and dissemination of the
Buddha's teachings, as study and research of the Buddhist Scriptures is an
essential duty of Buddhists. It is one way of ensuring the longevity of the
Buddhist religion and that Buddhism to serve the people of the world.
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Last updated date January 25,2000
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