The Taisho Tripitaka of 78.77 million Chinese characters and the Manji Tripitaka Sequel comprising 71.22 million characters, among other major Buddhist scriptures and rare books, have been digitized and made into a CD-ROM by Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) over the past 18 years, which is now circulated in at least 22 countries, signifying the pride of Taiwan’s Buddhist circles. The Association organized a presentation meeting at Dharma Drum Degui Academy at 2 pm on July 22, 2016, where scholars including Lan Jifu, Du Zhengmin, Zhou Haiwen, and Hong Zhenzhou were invited to promote and showcase the added information and features of the new edition CD-ROM. Interested persons can request free copies and are welcome to download it online for free.

Ven. Huimin, chairman of CBETA, said that from 2008 to 2011 the Jiaxing Tripitaka of 13.03 million characters was also included, which, along with other cannons, became the Supplementary Collection for the Tripitaka throughout Dynasties, of 11.17 million characters. The Supplementary Compilation for Tripitaka, with 23 million characters and compiled by Prof. Lan Jifu in 2016, contains many valuable Buddhist texts not collected in the Tripitaka before. To considerate both quantity and quality, the compilation stuck to two principles. First, it stresses their academic research value, and so not every book would be collected. Secondly, it only collects authored and compiled Buddhist texts dated up to the end of Qing Dynasty. Moreover, the “Publication Collection on Chinese Buddhist Temple Gazetteers” compiled by Du Jiexiang, together with the “Publication Series on Chinese Buddhist Temple Gazetteers” compiled by Bai Huawen and Zhang zhi, have been included in newly established chapter of “Chinese Buddhist Temple Gazetteers.” Thus, CEBETA’s Electronic Buddhist Text now contains over 200 million Chinese characters.

Meanwhile, by working with Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts (DILA) the Association officially unveiled the “CBETA Online Reading” platform at this presentation meeting, hoping that it can serve as a new generation of digital resource for Buddhist research. In addition to the basic online sutra-reading function, this Chinese literature learning and research platform that focuses on Buddhist texts also features the functions of “Integrated Text Reader,” “Deep Search,” and “Digital Textual Analysis,” by adding catalogs, dictionaries, people’s names, place names, and historical timelines, and by combining digital contents, individual topic research, and information technology.

The Association’s executive secretary Wu Baoyuan said that CBETA’s Electronic Buddhist Text reflects the collective efforts of all who care about the development of electronic Buddhist texts. Many volunteers have helped with keying in texts on computers, proofreading, checking missing characters, placing punctuation, and giving feedbacks to questions from the readers. Scholars who promote CBETA in the academic circles as well as group and individual sponsors also make CBETA’s sustainable development possible, which is highly valued and praised by Buddhist devotees and persons interested in Buddhist study and practice.

Wu took the processing of Chinese character variants as an example to explain how they tried to meet the need of different reading preferences. While most people are used to commonly seen characters, Buddhist researchers prefer keeping the characters originally adopted in the sutras, such as虎 instead of its archaic variant