Lewis Lancaster: Study of Buddhism

Emeritus Professor of University of California Berkeley, Lewis Lancaster, will speak on digital resources for the study of Buddhism.

Lewis Lancaster, a specialist in the canons of Buddhist texts, was the first student to complete the Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for 33 years, with five years as Chair. By means of a grant from the National Geographic Society, he and a group of students and faculty inventoried texts in monasteries among the Sherpa people in the Himalayas. He then began to research the problems of converting Buddhist texts from Pali and Chinese into computer format, which resulted in major CD ROM databases. That computer experience then led him to form an association of scholars called the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, which is housed on the Berkeley campus and has a thousand affiliates worldwide. He is now President at Hsilai University in Rosemead.