ATLAS OF CHINESE AND HIMALAYAN RELIGIONS

Howie Lan, University of California, Berkeley

The Atlas of Chinese and Himalayan Religions is a project of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley in collaboration with scholars in China, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and U.S.A.  In  Phase I of the construction, the focus was on Buddhist sites.  More than 18,000 centers have been geo-registered.  During this period, Prof. Jiang Wu at the University of Arizona constructed a detailed record of Buddhist monastic lineages. We are now working in Phase II with funding from the Luce Foundation.  This year our efforts will be mainly addressed to including Islamic sites and enhancing the Buddhist material with information for many of the locations.  For example,  all references to Buddhism and to monasteries in the twenty-five dynastic histories will be geo-registered and linked to the sites in the atlas map. Later, the Christian sites will be added along with Daoist and Jewish information.  When the Phase II is completed in 2010, the atlas will contain thousands of religious sites in a format that will allow them to be used in animated maps by date of establishment. As more material is added to each site, the atlas should become a standard reference work for online research.