ATLAS OF TAIWANESE RELIGION

Cheer Dean (Yuan Heng Graduate School of Buddhism)

The preservation of Buddhist treasures has entered the digital era by which once was oral, pattra and printing.  We are the pioneers who have been directed toward this digitization in the 21st century.  The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) is an association of scholars, a partnership of information system specialists and the scholarly community dedicated to the support of scholarship through technology.  Guided by ECAI, there are a whole range of events which marks the changes and shiftings all over the world.  Following the traditional mission to preserve those treasures, we are on a position to call for another assembly.  Our goal is not just reserving a safe, long-lasting, and convenient database but also identifying the next movement of the digital era.

The history and development of Chinese Buddhism in Taiwan including the transmission of Buddhism and Zhajiao to the island, the development of institutions that were or are island-wide in scope and function, the biographies of significant figures, the doctrinal negotiations that have helped shape the identity of Taiwanese Buddhism, the diversified Buddhism, and the Buddhist interactions with government authorities under the three regimes that have ruled the island during four periods : 1) The Ming and Qing Dynasty (1660-1895), 2) The Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945), 3) The Nationalist Regime (1945-2000), and 4) Taiwanese Buddhism of 21st Century (2000- ), have been important part of whole Buddhist World.  Like the tradition of major regional Buddhism, Taiwanese Buddhism should be encapsulated, preserved and digitalized.

The digital information technology has shown its significance in preservation and illustration of Buddhist treasures to a new level.  The initial stage of the Atlas of Taiwanese Religion is to build a Taiwanese Buddhist database for the retrieval of data over the Internet from servers located anywhere in the world.  Guided by the ECAI and its paradigm of the historical atlas, research data of all Taiwanese Buddhist sites and related branches are indexed by time (When), place (Where), event (What) and person (Who), using temporally-enabled Google Earth search platform and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software.  User queries will retrieve and display data in GIS layers on a designed map-based interface, allowing comparisons across discipline, region, time and religion (others will be built after the completion of initial stage).  We look forward to seeing these treasures presented in a new way.