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Digital Tipiṭaka Archives :
From Stone Pillars to Ola Leave Inscriptions
and from Temple Monuments to Electronic Documents...
at www.dhammasociety.org
In order to protect and preserve the Pāḷi Tipiṭaka for prosterity, it was crucial that a historical and circumstantial evidence of Tipiṭaka preservation in different part of the world must be recorded; furthermore, these Tipiṭaka archives must also be made available for the public. These are some examples :
When Ashoka the Great Dhamma Protector of India (B.E.240-312) erected the Lion Capital Pillar in 250 B.C.E., or 300 B.E. after the Buddha's Parinibbāna, the Emperor started one of the most remarkable technological processes of Tipiṭaka documentation in human history --a Tipiṭaka archiving in stone. Carved out of a single block of polished sandstone, these magnificent Lion Capital Pillars totaled 84,000, one for each Dhammakhandha, which were then already well-preserved in the oral tradition of the Pāḷi Tipiṭaka in old India. These ancient technology marvels --the Dhamma technology-- marked some of the great historic locations on earth according to the life of the Buddha.
In 443 B.E., the Fourth Great Council was held in Sri Lanka. The Theravāda Buddhist monks under the guidance of King Valagambhahu the Great, for the first time in the history of Buddhasāsana, committed the 84,000 Dhammakhandhas to writing on ola leaves. The first written Pāli Tipiṭaka in Sinhalese Script was thus presented to the world, resulting in the preservation of the Tipiṭaka in its completeness and purity for the future generations. The Holy Cave of Matale where the historic Tipiṭaka inscribing took place has since been the living museum of indigenous Dhamma technology and ola-leave archives for the world to visit and contemplate.
One thousand years later in old Burma, King Anawrahta, the Great Tipiṭaka Patron of Pagan (B.E.1587-1620) followed this tradition in Tipiṭaka archiving by building as many as 84,000 temples in the Irrawaddy Delta, thereby proclaiming his homage to the 84,000 Dhammakhandhas in the Pāḷi Tipiṭaka, then already inscribed in Burmese script.
Almost another thousand years had passed, King Chulalongkorn Chulachomklao the Great of Siam (B.E.2396-2453), sent nearly a thousand sets of his newly printed Tipiṭaka in modern book-form as gifts of Dhamma to Buddhist monasteries all over the Kingdom as well as to great libraries all over the world in order to preserve the sacred 84,000 Dhammakhandhas. No less than 260 international institutions in five continents have been identified to have received the royal gifts over a century ago.
Today, the Dhamma Society is humbly following this magnanimous royal tradition of the Great Tipiṭaka Protectors. As a modern homage to the Dhamma, digital archives from over 6-year work of the World Tipiṭaka Project have been made into a series of Tipiṭaka documentary for the international public.
These electronic documents, a collective collaboration of individuals and institutions both at home and abroad, are the records of pious processes of the World Tipiṭaka Project in order to preserve all of the 84,000 Dhammakhandhas in the International Council Pāḷi Tipiṭaka by means of Information Technology. The modern ICT, as clearly evident in digital video recordings and digital-printing Tipiṭaka, now finally completed in Roman alphabet, have made it possible for a small organisation, such as the Dhamma Society, to be able to achieve the challenging goal of preserving and propagating the World Tipiṭaka Edition.
The Dhamma Society's e-documentaries were produced by project volunteers through supports of Tipiṭaka patrons. They were edited and stored in private homes of the Dhamma Society's patrons and friends. Being a private and modestly funded organisation, the Dhamma Society employed no commercial firms to record or organise any of the work of the project. These digital Tipiṭaka archives which amount to more than a thousand hours of audio and video footages to-date, have never been released to the public.
On August 15, 2007, exactly 8 years after the World Tipiṭaka Project's first archive recording was made, the e-archive documentaries will be released through global Internet viewers for the first time.
A simple message of this webpage : welcome to the new world of international and meritorious collaboration in wisdom-based technology and Peace for future generation.
Dhamma Society Fund
July 12, 2007
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