Linked Data Methodologies in Gandhāran Buddhist Art and Texts Working Group: An Update
By Frederik Elwert and Jessie Pons
The Working Group Linked Data Methodologies in Gandhāran Buddhist Art and Texts (LDM) aims at establishing a set of guidelines for publishing and linking visual and textual resources on Gandhāran Buddhism. While many databases of sculptures, manuscripts, inscriptions documenting the history of Buddhism in this region exist, these are usually separated silos. The goal of the LDM working group is to foster interoperability between these repositories in an endeavour to facilitate transdisciplinary collaboration and advance our knowledge of Buddhism in Gandhāra.
Quite a lot has happened since our last blog post and we are pleased to see how the working group has grown in both size and scope! A series of preliminary visual meetings took place between the 16th and the 22nd of July 2019 between the various members in order to assess the range of interests and needs of the various parties involved and to set the agenda for the workshop. In preparation for the latter, we circulated spreadsheets (GoogleDoc) with datasets corresponding to the three main areas which we placed at the fore of the group’s programme, namely places, motifs and narratives. These datasets largely stem from three sources respectively:
1. The census of Buddhist sites that Luca Maria Olivieri and Jessie Pons developed in 2019.
2. The IsIAO Repertory of Terms for Cataloguing Gandhāran Sculptures. During the course of the DiGA project, central entries have been compiled in a Google Sheet and if possible matched with entries from Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, Iconclass, and GND.
3. The list of episodes of the Buddha’s last existence established by Jessie Pons for her doctoral research on Gandhāran art and the list of previous birth stories developed by Chris Clark and Naomi Appleton within the frame of the Jātaka Stories project at the University of Edinburgh. We are extremely grateful to both for generously agreeing to share their contribution and for joining the working group!
More methodological issues were also raised regarding the standardisation of terminologies, technical implementations and outreach: what information should be included in the vocabularies and the geographical gazetteer and to which degree of detail? In which format should the vocabularies be published? Which database systems are in use in the different projects? How can interoperability be improved? How do we publish the results of the working group (Blog posts, datasets)?
With these exciting questions in mind, we organised the workshop on the 12th-13th of September at the Centre for Religious Studies of the Ruhr University. We were delighted to welcome practically all the members of the working group in Bochum! Stephan Baums (Gandhari.org and Buddhistische Handschriften aus Gandhāra, LMU Münich) and Luca Maria Olivieri (Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan) came from Germany, Antonio Amato (Digitization of Gandhāran Artefacts, formerly in Bochum) and Anna Filigenzi (University of Naples, l’Orientale) from Italy and Peter Stewart (Classical Art Research Centre, University of Oxford) travelled from the UK. Gregory Parker (Classical Art Research Centre, University of Oxford) and Chris Clark and Naomi Appleton (Jātaka Stories in Indian Literature and Art, University of Edinburgh) were unable to travel but Gregory and Chris attended the meeting via video conference.
Following brief introductory presentations of their respective projects by the participants, the group reviewed the various datasets and identified various gaps and deficiencies to be covered.
The group divided into three major task-forces that will continue the work initiated in September.
Task-force Places (Luca Maria Olivieri, Antonio Amato and Stefan Baums) will draw upon the census of Gandhāran Buddhist sites to develop a historical gazetteer of Gandhāra. The latter will include additional layers of information such as ancient toponomastic, places mentioned in Buddhist texts, and data related to archaeological excavations. Collaboration with the Gandhari.org project which records a list of findspots for Gāndhārī manuscripts and inscribed objects will be central to this task force.
Task-force Narratives and Motifs (Anna Filigenzi, Chris Clark/Naomi Appleton, Jessie Pons) will expand the Repertory of Terms merging it with three additional datasets listing protagonists, events from the Buddha’s biography (including his previous birth stories and his final existence), and a list of story clusters. The latter draws upon the inspiring work conducted by Chris Clark and Naomi Appleton. A single story may exist in many versions and can be referred to by different titles. How then should one designate that story? Chris and Naomi propose a helpful solution by using a generic label which captures the core theme of a story (i.e. story cluster).
Task-force Infrastructure (Peter Stewart, Gregory Parker, Antonio Amato, Frederik Elwert) will focus on the more technical questions of how to implement such a system and how to add cross-links on a database level.
The coordinators of the working group are currently drafting a plan of action with concrete milestones in the development of vocabularies, best-practice guidelines for interoperable databases and a proposal for an overarching architecture that will incorporate databases engaged in collaboration projects on Gandhāran Buddhism and by extension Buddhist Narratives. As a next step, this plan will be published as a white paper.
