Notes on geography for Map of Early Buddhism

I had a mysterious adventure playing about with the klm files in which I finally gave myself an introductory education on regex.

Ditto, except, I’d want to suggest Google Maps is really good on most things, but a bit rubbish on some; not being able to insert discrete links in descriptions being one, a limitation on amount of description that can be inserted being another, and a link redirect delay and a limitation on the number of layers that can be used thrown in for fun.

Oooh, cool! I didn’t know that.

It takes a tiny bit of time, but is easy enough for it to be perfectly doable (more kml and regex fun :smiley: ). The question of whether it is desirable might be another thing: here is an example with the capitals layer. Much as I’m all for hooting and tooting for the open source movement, the reason why I looked at uMap is because for the purpose of adding links Google Maps is the poorer option.

In many other circumstances I wouldn’t be overly fussed about the aesthetic, but here I feel inserting a bunch of long links has an excessively detrimental effect on the ability to read/access the given information.

Furthermore, for shorter entries it’s not a problem, but, given the description limit, for longer entries it means the description will get cut off: eg. Bārānasī, or Rājagaha.

Yep, there surely are! Delicate balance and all. My criteria went something like

  • satisfies certain requirements unsatisfied elsewhere
  • poorly performing aspects are not so bad as to preclude the experiment (at one point I thought the data wasn’t searchable which would have put a swift end to that idea)
  • allowance for the “it is adoption that supports development” principle.

I did, however, make my assessment well before adding the territory (polygon) layers, and this might have tipped things in another way as uMap really doesn’t seem to be able to cope with them especially well.

In any case, there is now an additional bit of data available (new number conversions) that should be easily enough extractable and adaptable for other applications.

Me either, but I just don’t see how else to reconcile the information that Pācīnavaṁsadāya and Sahajāti were in Cetiya. A big shrug of the shoulders on that one!

Yes, but not toooo much detail, right? There’s just no way that I haven’t made at least a few mistakes. :fearful:

Shucks! Looks like another introductory education for me :laughing:

Hmm, maybe Google Maps API could be poked into. I’m a bit conscious of unhelpful efforts to help that cause distraction and cost time, so perhaps all could enjoy a spell of amnesia with regards to the above at least for the while of further exploration. :wink:

No worries, explore away.

Much as I love the open source world, it seems to me that there is no way the open source ecosystem is going to compete with Google maps for the forseeable future.

The reason is that it’s not just maps. I think what Google is building is a 3D digital representation of the entire world. Like, every single material object in the world. This will be a cornerstone of their future tech, including, obviously, self-driving cars, even flying cars, but also VR.

Add AI, which will create a digital representation of all the minds in the world, fueled with all the information from social media. Stir well, and we all have an AI-powered virtual avatar living in that digital world, interacting with other avatars. Like Second Life, except, you know alive. Want to know what a certain restaurant is like? Send your avatar to have a meal there, with a few friends, and afterwards it can tell you, not what a reviewer thinks, but what you think.

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:laughing: Well, when you put it like that building a digital road to Sāvatthī seems of much greater consequence than I imagined!

Maybe we could recreate ancient India in 3D to visit and listen to a sermon by the Buddha!

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Yeah, about that… re the above, it took me above a minute to determine linking the suttas up is well within the range of possibility. It took me another minute to determine doing so is well outside my puny capabilities.

After sorrowing, languishing, lamenting, weeping beating my breast, and becoming confused I figured it can’t be that hard so further tinkering was undertaking. This is as far as I’ve got so far and there obviously a way to go before it’s worth saying anything about - I can’t quite believe something so simple as adding a href entails quite such a learning curve. Still, interesting stuff.

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I recall a news feature out of Japan that showed a table of lovely and smart Japanese women eating together, only because the men in their peer group had no interest in dating or partnering with women; the men were all in VR and AI entertainment centers, playing games that simulated human experiences. For some Japanese men, technology displaced the need for human interaction. For the women, the men seemed just childish, or brainwashed by technology.

I wonder if technology will advance faster than the human race’s ability to psychologically adapt to it. I hate to use the word pathology again, but maybe there is a pathology that develps when matters of the mind and heart become subordinated to virtual experiences. The more technology in this area progresses, the more I want to retreat to Wat Umong, and just sit on the edge of the pond and feed the fish.

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Is the link provided in #18 still the most up-to-date version of the map?
Is there a way to find the map easier than in this discussion - is it fixed somewhere?

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Hello All. :blush: I recently came across this map of Buddha time’s cities and rivers at a musuem near to an Monastery archaelogical site in eastern part of India. Thought to share here. :slightly_smiling_face:

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The map is embedded in all dictionary entries and search results for names. Like for instance:

https://suttacentral.net/search?query=rajagaha

and https://suttacentral.net/define/rājagaha

From there you can open the larger map too and zoom.

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Dear @Vimala I think Verañjā needs to be move much closer to Madhura.
Please check Ancient Geography Of India : Sastri Surendranath Majumdar : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
p.430-432, or
The Ancient Geography of India/Kanoj - Jatland Wiki

Kaṇṇakujja is here quite clearly identified as current ‘Kannauj’, former ‘Kanoj’ and ancient ‘Kanyakubja’

This is confirmed by p.430 where ‘Sangkisa’ (i.e. Pali Saṅkassa, today ‘Sankisa’) is located 50 miles NW away from it and also had an Asoka pillar https://goo.gl/maps/cdbcFyQaU2K2

This still leaves open Soreyya and Verañjā. But if the cities from the Vinaya route are somewhat equidistant Soreyya could be somewhere around Etah.

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Thank you @Gabriel. Maybe @Aminah can have a look as she made the map.

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Will do (at some reasonably soon point :crossed_fingers:).

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Okay, so here’s the story of plotting Verañjā so far…

… Bhante suggested putting them in with question marks, I said,

Then, some ages later…

In short,

Looks like I get to dodge the recommended reading! :sweat_smile:

Checking out the revisions I made in Feb of last year (on the uMap - linked above) they seem to agree with your recommendations. While I felt at liberty to do whatever I wanted with my own map, I recall I was extremely cautious about changing any info on SC’s map without the approval.

As our conclusions about Soreyya and Verañjā agree I’ve just gone ahead and moved them so they align with the uMap and in the process I’ve found that it looks like at some point or other I felt it reasonable to add other locations on the uMap (not on the SC map - I haven’t added these as I haven’t checked up the PDPN entries to check for SC specific edits).

There may, in fact, be other differences between the two maps, but I barely remembered how to log into them never mind the work done on them, save for the point that the uMap is my latest and best guess at things… I think there could have been some minor description corrections, as well, come to think of it … who know’s?! :woman_shrugging: My general hope had been to be able to present a linkified version on a stable platform, but after an enjoyable, all the same dizzying and failed attempt to get my head around javascript I just let the notion get very cozy under the ever growing pile of other stuff to do.

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Oh, Ven. @Vimala just in case you need to change the coordinates of what shows on the dictionary pages, I figure I should let you know exactly what I moved:

  • Naḷerupucimanda / Naḷerupucimanda / Nalerupucimaṇḍa
  • Verañjā
  • Soreyya
  • Sankassa
  • Kaṇṇakujja / Kaṇṇagocchaka / Kaṇṇagotta
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I was so excited to find the mapping done in this thread. But so much more excited to learn that there were restaurants and coffeeshops in the Buddha’s India. :wink:

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:grin:

  1. Sankissa on the map is at different place. While exact place is here https://goo.gl/maps/H7bLA69d8CR2
  2. One of the version from Buddhologists Piprahwa is exact place of Kapilavastu, so I think need mark there as kapilavatthu as well
  3. I think many people heard, that so famous place inculded in 8 places for visiting (4 classical is where Buddha born, attained Nibbana, taught first sermon, and goes to Parinibbana), so extra 4 (Place where monkey gave honey to Buddha, place where Buddha descended from Heaven after preaching to Mother, Place where Buddha showed Twin Miracle, and another one place where Buddha stopped elephant nalagiri which was sent by Devadatta), so first three locations of extra places known for everyone, but last one place where Buddha stopped elephant I can’t find, i searched in Google a lot, buy only I can find that this place mentioned among places for visiting. May be someone knows, where does Buddha stopped elephant Nalagiri?

In his tracks! :rofl:

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:joy: :joy: :joy:

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