“Key Issues in Compiling a Digital Gazetteer of China’s Historical Religious Sites”
Merrick Lex Berman, Harvard University

One way to compile a database of historical religious sites is to begin by digitizing descriptions of those sites found in widely used secondary sources. For example, Da Qing yitong zhi provides brief descriptive information about several thousand temples and monasteries. In turn, 2,407 of those temple descriptions were compiled into a single index, Chu-goku no jiin. Therefore, by compiling each record listed in the 264 page Chu-goku no jiin index, we can expediently create a database of nearly all the temple descriptions that are scattered throughout tens of thousands of pages in the Da Qing yitong zhi. This paper recounts the process of digitizing the Chu-goku no jiin, including the georeferencing of the temple descriptions to known point locations in the China Historical GIS database, and considerations for how to carry on the next step of research. Thorny issues that still need to be dealt with include: reconciling conflicting information between different gazetteer sources, confirming more precise locations for the historical religious sites, representing locations of sites for which we have only general location descriptions, and extending the database to include important events related to each of the temples.