DDBC Time Authority database, Oct. 2010

Author: Simon Wiles, DDBC
Contact: digital_archives@ddbc.edu.tw
Web site:http://authority.ddbc.edu.tw/
Date: October, 2010

Contents

Description

This archive contains the current snapshot of the DDBC Time Authority database, as of October, 2010, including full data for the Chinese, Japanese and Korean Dynastic calendars.

The calendar data has been assembled by the Library and Information Center of Dharma Drum Buddhist College 法鼓佛教學院 (http://www.ddbc.edu.tw/) between 2008 and 2010. The Japanese data builds upon data provided by Takashi SUGA.

This database is part of the Buddhist Authority Database Project, hosted at DDBC (http://authority.ddbc.edu.tw/).

For the latest snapshot, and for more information and downloads, visit http://authority.ddbc.edu.tw/docs/open_content/.

License

The data is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. See COPYING.txt for the complete license.

Archive Contents

The archive contains the following files:

Requirements

The SQL import file contained in this archive was produced from a MySQL 5.x series database. The Foreign Key constraints and relations that are part of the schema require the InnoDB transactional storage engine, which is part of most default MySQL installs, and will be the default storage engine in MySQL from version 5.5 onwards. At present we advise this environment for depolying the Buddhist Authority Database data, although a migration to PostgreSQL is a possibility at some point. However, it should be possible to convert the schema into other formats. If you have success with this, or require any assistance, please contact us.

Notes

For a full description of the Database and it's relations, see SCHEMA.txt.

Dealing with prolepsis in East Asian calendars

Prolepsis, in this context, is the use of a dating system to cover events which do not occur during its legitimate time-frame. In this way the proleptic Gregorian or proleptic Julian calendars can be used to refer to dates before the existence of these calendars themselves.

In the context of the Chinese calendar, this phenomenon is commonly manifest in two kinds of circumstances:

  • the first occurs when historical sources refer to dates in their respective futures, specifying a year of an era (年號) which subsquently never comes to pass;
  • the second is where a historical source continues to use the dating system of an era, emperor or dynasty after that era, emperor or dynasty has ceased to exist.

To be able to cope with this, our database contains records which cover, where appropriate, a range of dates before and/or after the actual historical period spanned by a given era, emperor or dynasty. A result of this is that the extents of these periods as reported by the database will be inaccurate in some cases.

We have therefore introduced into our database a status field, which allows us to record that the period covered by the record in question is merely hypothetical, or 'proleptic'. This is indicated by a 'P' in this field. In addition, a start_from field has been added to facilitate the recording of lunar months which straddle a change in status: such a lunar month is represented in the database by two records, where the latter has a start_from value indicating the day on which it becomes valid. Please note, however, that the research required to accurately and exhaustively populate these fields has yet to be completed, and as a result the beginning and ending dates reported by the database for particular reigns should not be taken as authoratative.

Current Limitations

The DDBC Time Authority Database has certain limitations.

  • Indication of the actual date ranges covered by dynasties, emperors and eras is not complete (see above). As such the database does not give 100% reliable information about the historal duration of these periods.
  • The eclipse field indicates the day on which traditional sources report an eclipse, and is not fully populated.
  • Certain smaller, peripheral dynasties are not included in the database.