Dictionary Help

Digital Library and Text Reader

The website includes a digital library with a text reader that embeds the Chinese Notes, so that you can find the English equivalents by mousing over or clicking on any word in the text.

Digital Library

The Digital Library includes the Chinese texts of the Taisho Tripitaka. To use it naviate to the Texts page, browse the titles, and click on one. Mouse over the text to see a brief translation of any Chinese word. Click on any word to see more detail. This is shown in the screenshot below.

Quotations in Texts

The dictionary also include a quotation database. Any quotations found in the texts in the digital library are highlighted in green. If you click on the green highlighted text, a dialog will be shown that includes a citation with an English source that can be used to match the Chinese and English. This is shown in the screenshot below.

Working with Sanskrit

Many Chinese Buddhist terms have an Indian origin. Where possible the NTI Reader dictionary include these in either the English equivalent field or the notes. The format given adds diacritics using the International Alphabet for Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) standard. For example, 鉢 pātra 'alms bowl.' Chinese terms with Sanskrit equivalents will be highlighted in the reader with light red, as in the screenshot below.

See the Understanding Buddhist Sanskrit Terms page for more details. To find texts in Sanskrit, see the bibliographic information for the given text or browse the University of the West Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon at http://www.dsbcproject.org/.