| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 教育資料科學學系 === 88 === The purpose of this study is to examine the possibility of establishing a thesaurus of a subject based upon another thesaurus created from a core text of the same topic. The multiple methodologies adopted in the research include content analysis, comparative study, consulting and empirical study.
The process of the study starts from, first, establishing a thesaurus of the Heart Sutra, an essential text of the Mahaprajnaparamita scriptures, according to the criteria of equivalent, hierarchical, and associated relationship. Second, index the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, the encyclopedic version of the prajnaparamita scriptures, chapter by chapter. Finally, the results obtained from the previous two steps are compared from the following aspects: both the term and the meaning are the same, same term with different meanings, same meaning with different terms, the meaning in one set is either broader or narrower than that of its counterpart, word(s) within a term is related to its meaning, both the term and the meaning are different.
The results show that 25.33% of the indexed terms of the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra totally match the terms from the thesaurus of the Heart Sutra, 36.13% partially matched, and while 38.54% are neither total or partial match. In other words, about 61.46% of the indexed terms of the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra are also covered by the thesaurus of the Heart Sutra. Among the rest 38.54%, when further analyzed, 35.18% of them are linked to that of the Heart Sutra through certain relationships. To sum up the comparison, the relevancy between the two word lists reaches 96.64%. Therefore, it is logical to infer from the survey that the thesaurus created from the Heart Sutra can be used as sources to develop the thesaurus of Buddhist prajnaparamita literature.
The significance of the findings is fivefold. First, it is possible to establish a thesaurus of a subject based upon another thesaurus created from a core text of the same subject. Second, the thesaurus created from the Heart Sutra can be expanded into the thesaurus of the prajnaparamita scriptures. Third, the thesaurus created from the Heart Sutra manifests the main concepts embedded in the Buddhist prajna thought. Four, a general Buddhist thesaurus will be a needed reference for Buddhist research. Finally, the outline of Buddhist sutras is the important sources for Buddhist concepts or key words for indexing.
Following this study, further research or advancement can be developed from at least five perspectives. First of all, another research can be done to examine whether it is possible to establish a thesaurus of the entire prajna literature, including commentaries, based upon the thesaurus of the Heart Sutra? Second, a general and comprehensive Buddhist thesaurus may be established, through the adoption of the categories mentioned in the New Classification Scheme for Buddhist Libraries, by compiling the mini-thesauruses created from each category based upon the representative text of that category. Third, a thesaurus of multi-languages is helpful especially for content analysis since most of the Buddhist scriptures are originated from either Sanskrit or Pali. Fourth, the examination of the applicability of the term-selection method, used in the creation of the Heart Sutra thesaurus, to other areas. Last but not the least, the established thesaurus can be used as a key-word dictionary for search purpose among databases.
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