Digital English Catalogue of the Chinese Taishō Canon


(CBETA–Taishō Edition)

(CBETA–Taishō Edition)

The Taishō Revised Buddhist Canon (大正新脩大藏經) is the principal critical edition of the Chinese Buddhist scriptures—the enduring corpus that sustained monastic learning and lay study across East Asia for centuries. It is the archive through which India’s voices of liberation—Sūtra, Vinaya, and Abhidharma—found new life in Chinese translation, and from which Korea and Japan further transmitted, systematized, and elaborated the Dharma.

This Trilingual Tripiṭaka Index honors that historical architecture by aligning three coordinated dimensions of the canon:

• Chinese: CBETA primary titles.
• Sanskrit: Where attested or conventionally reconstructed.
• English: Curated translation resources.

This index is deliberately ordered by Taishō/CBETA numbering in order to preserve canonical context and ensure precision in cross-reference. Each Taishō number anchors an entry to its material witness in the printed canon, while CBETA’s digital edition supplies a living access point for reading, collation, and research. Where English translations exist, they are directly bound to the corresponding entry; where multiple translations are available, abbreviated and hyperlinked references are provided to maintain compactness without sacrificing navigability. Sanskrit correspondences are included when supported by philological evidence; where no secure Sanskrit source survives, a conventional title is supplied and its status indicated.

Two Cautions for the Reader

First, Vinaya materials were composed as a discipline for ordained monastics; their inclusion here is for completeness, but the texts themselves presuppose commitment to the vows they regulate. Second, the canon is not a single book but a continent of discourse: sectarian layers, commentarial strata, indigenous treatises, and liturgical compendia coexist within the Taishō. This index therefore functions as both map and bridge—a map that keeps the reader oriented within the canon’s internal regions, and a bridge that links Taishō numbering to modern scholarly and practitioner-accessible resources.

Editorial Posture & Goals

The editorial posture adopted here is restrained but generous. Headings are standardized, diacritics normalized, and obvious inconsistencies corrected, while established scholarly conventions are respected where nomenclature remains contested. The aim is a guide that is clear and traversable: concise enough for public use, exact enough to support academic inquiry, and flexible enough to accommodate future correction and expansion.

The purpose of this trilingual Taishō index is to make the voluminous Mahāyāna Chinese canon available to the English-speaking world as quickly and responsibly as possible. Efforts are underway across the Buddhist scholarly community to translate the entire canon—some employing electronic or assisted translation technologies, others proceeding carefully, one text at a time. Regardless of method, the process of translation, review, and editorial refinement by more than one bilingual reader remains essential to improving accuracy, clarity, and doctrinal fidelity.

May this index serve as a wayfinding net—Indra’s net recast as bibliography—where each node reflects the others: Chinese anchoring the received tradition, Sanskrit recalling its sources, and English opening pathways of understanding for today’s students of the Dharma.

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