I was referencing the subject index topic GIVING for my research on Buddha’s teachings on Giving. I was also using the book “In the Buddha’s words” by Bhikkhu Bodhi for my research. I found below Suttas related to Giving not appearing in Subject Index -
I request you to kindly evaluate and include tag these sutras so that they appear in the subject index. In case there is any error from my end, I apologise & please let me know so that I can take care the next time.
Hello @abhinav1, thanks for using SuttaCentral for your research, and thanks for reaching out about some problems with the subject index.
Unfortunately, there are even more problems with all of SuttaCentral’s indexes. They are certainly not complete, and there are quite a number of wrong links.
These indexes stem originally from the Access to Insight website and have been adapted for SuttaCentral, but they are lacking a thorough revision. As far as I know there isn’t any capacity for this at the moment—Bhante @sujato?
Thank you for your additions to the topic of “giving”—perhaps we should collect these things somewhere. A while ago I have compiled some errors with links, perhaps it would be good to put all that together in one place so that it can be used for a revision when the time comes.
Thank you for your such a kind and detailed reply. Thanks for confirming. Yes, I have observed this issue in other topics as well.
Just to give a background, I have got a strong inspiration to delve deep in learning & sharing Buddha teachings and hence I started a Buddha teachings youtube channel & have started sharing stuff since in ast 6 months or so. In my research, I use various sources especially the Suttacentral subject index.
My focus is to create 10-20 mns videos on my learnings from specific topics like Budhda teachings on death, impermanence, desire etc. I am extremely indebted to Suttacentral team for helping me in this research & wish entire team peace & to be free from suffering for this wonderful work.
I believe a good subject index will help many researchers & learners like me. I would definitely accumulate the modifications somewhere as I go on my research & would be most happy to share it if your team can use it some way. If there is any mechanism to stay updated on when this project is announced, I will definitely want to stay updated so that I can share my list of modifications needed in the index. Please let me know if thats possible.
Also would request support - in this situation, can you recommend any other databases/books/resources which contain subject wise index like available on Suttacentral - it will not only help in my research but also help me to compare and find missing stuff which we can use to update Suttacental index.
Actually, the search function on SuttaCentral has been greatly improved recently, and it’s still a focus where work is going on. Using SuttaCentral search for keywords or phrases may certainly be of help for you.
There’s also SuttaCentral Voice (this is the new version, and it’s is still under development; ignore the content of the “Wiki” section, which doesn’t actually belong here).
Voice has originally been designed for the visually disabled and offers audio output of the Suttas. It also has a curated list of example search terms about relevant topics, like for example “root of suffering”, that support study of a topic from different angles across the canon. There is also the “inspire me” button for a random example term.
A term like “giving” would just be too general and would return dozens, if not hundreds of results, which becomes quickly unwieldy. However if you start typing this term in the search field, example terms from our list that contain the word will pop up, and you can move your search in a more specific direction:
I commented on your other message, but just to repeat, we would love to do something better.
If you have a concrete idea, we would love to hear it. I have some vague thoughts, but nothing so far that has really convinced me that it would be so much better as to justify putting in the work.
