Buddhist Scriptures
The Mahidol University Computing Center Edition of
This copy is made available to UVa users only.
BUDSIR IV is a commercial product held by us under a licensing agreement with Mahidol University Computing Center. Access to the CD is restricted to on-site use by students faculty and staff at the University of Virginia. The Electronic Text Center does not have the rights to give or sell general access to this material.
Those interested in purchasing a copy of BUDSIR IV should contact Mahidol University. Please see our contact information page for details.
Scope and Contents
BUDSIR IV is a digital editon of the complete Tipitaka and Atthakatha. The program can retrieve any word (including compounds), phrase, or stretch of text that can be found in the Buddhist Scriptures. It is capable of searching both the Tipitaka and Atthakatha simultaneously, showing the results in two separate windows so that they can be studied and compared.
Starting Up BUDSIR IV
To begin using BUDSIR IV, insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive, click on the Start button, select Programs, and click on the MS-DOS icon labelled Buddhist Scriptures (near the end of the list). If you cannot find this icon, please ask a staff member for assistance.
Using BUDSIR IV
Although this program claims to have a mouse interface, the mouse doesn't work with the program as it is currently installed. Therefore, you need to know how to use the hotkeys and pull-down menus in order to navigate the program. The most important command for you to remember is F10 -- pressing this key will activate the pull-down menus, which you can then easily navigate with the arrow keys. If you seem to be stuck in the program at any point, always try using the F10 key first.
The program's main screen is divided into two windows; when you begin the program, the top screen displays the Tipitaka and the bottom screen displays the Atthakatha. To toggle back and forth between the windows, press F6. To expand the active window to the size of the full screen, press F5 (pressing F5 again will restore the two-window format).
- To search for a word or phrase, press Alt-W, type the word or
phrase in the dialogue box, and press Enter to perform the search
(or Escape to cancel). You can use * as a wildcard character.
Special character codes appear at the bottom of the dialogue box;
to enter a special character, first type the
letter and then type ', ^, or \ to add the
appropriate accent.
When you enter your search term, you should see a screen listing the number of hits found, listed by volume. To display one of your hits, type the appropriate volume number in the Search volume dialogue box and press Enter. You should see a list of all hits within that volume, identified by page number. Scroll through the list with the arrow keys and press Enter to make your selection. The window will reveal the page you requested and your search word will be highlighted. You can use the up and down arrows or the PgUp and PgDn keys to scroll through the full text. Pressing the right arrow takes you to the next occurrence of your search word; the left arrow takes you to the previous occurrence.
To search the Tipitaka and the Atthakatha simultaneously, go to the Configure menu and make sure that Linking is set to On. By default, the results of the Tipitaka search will appear in the top window and the results of the Atthakatha search will appear in the bottom window. - To browse through a volume of scripture, press Alt-V. You should see a list of the volumes of the Tipitaka or the Atthakatha, depending on which window you're in. Scroll through the list with the arrow keys and press Enter to select a volume. You will be prompted for a page number or an item number; type in the appropriate number and press Enter to jump directly to that point in the text. You can then scroll through the text using the arrow keys or the PgUp and PgDn keys.
- To save the text on your screen as an ASCII file, press F7. The content of the screen will be saved to a file called C:/BSTEMP/BSTEXT.DAT. If you continue to use the program and press F7 again later, you will overwrite your old file with the contents of the current screen. Please note that the Dell computer is not currently connected to a printer.