General:
These pages are intended for western Dharma practitioners who might wish to save some time by consulting these pages rather than trying to extract the same information from text sources.
Seeing that on the internet there are basically no comprehensive overviews of Buddhism as a whole, I present notes which I have collected over the last years in HTML format.
These notes are derived from various sources: books, teaching of various Dharma Masters, academic papers on Buddhism and also various internet sources.
Although care has been taken that all the information presented here is correct, there are many potential sources for error:
Drawing upon different sources, there is invariably a mixing of various transliteration systems even within the same page.
Considering that Dharma names are often "recycled", used over and over by different individuals generations apart, there is ample reason for confusion when trying to identify figures thousands of years in the past.
Additionally, different traditions have widely differing versions of the same historic events/personalities which aren't always easy to reconcile.
Consequently, the information presented here is certainly not up to "academic standards", and nothing presented here should be taken as definitive without confirmation with other sources.
If you see any glaring mistakes/omissions or would just like to contribute to the information presented here, please contact me.
Transliteration:
These pages are intended to be:
a) easily understandable for westerners not familiar with Asian languages/characters
b) readable on almost any computer without loading special fonts
In spite of the two above I have tried to include correct diacritical marks on the western characters which unfortunately isn't conducive to being found on search machines.
At the present no effort has been made to use Unicode or present names in their original characters.
Below are the codes for the special characters used:
Japanese:
For long Japanese vowels I use:
Ā for Ā
ā for ā
Ī for Ī
ī for ī
Ō for Ō
ō for ō
Sanskrit:
The special characters I used are:
Ā for Ā
ā for ā
Ī for Ī
ī for ī
Ō for Ō
ō for ō
Ū for Ū
ū for ū
Ś for Ś
ś for ś
ñ for ñ
x̣ for dots under characters (x̣)
Ţ for Ţ
ţ for ţ
for dots over characters I have not yet found a good HTML solution and have started to put the character in italics (n).
If you know of of a good simple solution for "dots over" I would be interested to hear about it.
Chinese:
Due to the fact that the Zen school is still alive in Japan and hardly in China, Japanese "Romanji" "(j)" is the preferred
transliteration for the names of old Chinese masters. When the Chinese is given here I also prefer the older Wade-Giles "(wg)" rather than Pin-Yin "(py)".
A Pin Yin-Wade Giles conversion Table is also provided here.
Tibetan:
I haven't yet included the Wylie transliteration. I do however often use German Umlauts which I (usually) code as:
ü for ü
ö for ö
ä for ä
I try to replace all special characters with the HTML equivalents. However sometimes I forget.
If you discover pages with unreadable characters please contact me.
Vietnamese:
My transliteration of Vietnamese is wholly inconsistent and, quite frankly, complete chaos. Sorry.
Any correction suggestions would be highly appreciated.
Format:
These pages are edited and updated regularly. The date of the last significant changes (YY.MM.DD) is listed at the bottom of the pages.
In general, the "revisit-after" meta setting is set at 14 days. When visiting pages more often press "reload" to get the latest version.
If your browser doesn't support the command "nobr" you might not be able to view the larger pages correctly.
In general the information is presented to show the relationship between persons and schools. This leads to linear and branched arrays.
Unfortunately the multiply-branched and later coalescing lines are almost impossible to accurately represent in a two dimensional web page.
In spite of this I have tried to develop a simple HTML Style which will graphically display descending branched arrays.
Although the schematic presentation used here can be easily understood by almost anyone who can read western characters, it seems that
some search engines have problems analyzing and indexing them. So if you like these pages please link them in appropriate pages. Thanks!!
Copyright:
The material here in it's present form and layout can be considered to be copyrighted by the author.
If however you would like to make significant additions, corrections, deletions to the general factual material presented here and present it in your own unique format, then of course go ahead.
There is no copyrights on historical facts but rather only on creative work.
Please be aware that the pages here can/do contain errors.
Increasingly I would like to include translations of works on which the copyrights have expired.
In Switzerland (the location of the server) this means works where the author and translator has been dead for more than 70 years.
If you re-publish such files please check the copyright laws of your country of residence!
Links:
All external links in thes pages are shown as ext.link.
Although I have made the effort to check all external links, I have no control over them and can take no responsibility for their content.
If you find that any "ext. links" are dead for long periods of time or are have become inappropriate in their content, please contact me.
Contact:
FYI these pages are based and hosted in Switzerland.
For editorial suggestions please contact (in German or English)
