Study on DDC classification numbers in Buddhism expanded for specific areas of pagodas and temples in Myanmar

Study on DDC classification numbers in Buddhism expanded for specific areas of pagodas and temples in Myanmar  Saw Mya Kyi Tha

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to identify classification numbers expanded the specific areas for Buddhist pagoda abd temples in Myanmar. Even in the current Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme, the class numbers assigned for Buddhism are not sufficient to describe the specific area of each pagoda and temple situated in Myanmar. This paper attempts to identify the supplemented classification numbers for Buddhism, especially by two ways: pure notation and mixed notation. In this paper, mixed notation system that shortens the class number is applied. For the area of Myanmar, notation "M" is assigned. Then each region and state should be assigned the notation number from 1 to15 base upon their arrangement stated in the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar 2008. It can produce expanded class numbers for Buddhist pagoda in Myanmar. Such expansion classification numbers can be utilized as an amendment to the current edition of DDC. It is believed that these expanded classification numbers will be useful for the descriptive cataloguing in classifying books on Buddhist pagodas and temples.

Introduction

Classifying books is one of the technical process in the field of library. To classify books, the librarian depends on the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme (DDC). The 22na edition of DDC has four volumes. Volume One is Table(Standard Subdivision) including Table 1 to Table 7. Volume Two and Three are Schedules (Classification numbers) and Volume Four is an index. In the schedule, there are ten main classes such as 000 for "General",100 for "Philosophy", 200 for "Religion",300 for "Social Science",700 for "Art",800 for "Literature", 900 for "Geography and History". Although class number 200 is assigned for religion, it mainly emphasizes on Christianity. The class numbers for Buddhism as well as Islam, Hinduism classified in DDC are limited in narrow sense. When comparing the class number for Christianity and Buddhism, Christianity is classified in broader sense but Buddhism is in narrow sense. The classification numbers for Buddhism are assigned only in "294.3". Actually, as Buddhism is one of the great religions of the world, more expansion classification numbers are essentially needed to supplement to cover the wide scope of it.

In Myanmar, Buddhist pagodas and temples are situated in different locations in the whole nation. According to the " Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar 2008", thr area of Myanmar is divided into seven regions, seven states. Each region and state has Buddhist pagodas and temples. But there are no sufficient class numbers to classify material concerning with those. All Buddhist pagodas are only represented by 294.3435 where they are located. Cataloguer cannot classify it in detail. This paper attempts to identify the supplemented classification numbers for Buddhism, especially for Buddhist pagodas and temples.

There are two ways to expend class numbers for Buddhist pagodas and temples: pure notation and mixed notation. Pure notation means that the class numbers are assigned only with numerals, whereas mixed notation uses both numerals and alphabets in assigning class numbers.

In this paper,Pali words are Romanized with transliteration method that is being widely used in Universities and schools that teach literature on Buddhism. For Myanmar words, Library of Congress

 Best Paper Award Winning Paper in Library and Information Studies, (2012). transliteration method is used. But, some Myanmar and Pali words imbedded in quotations are shown as in original works.

Suggestion

Before going in depth to the expanded class numbers for Buddhist pagodas and temples in Myanmar, readers should have known about pagodas (ဘုရား) which have three synonyms like cetiya (စေတီ), temple (ဂူဘုရား) , and stupa (စေတီ). The general meaning of pogoda is a thing which is honored, venerated and paid homage to by human beings,devas and cetiya.

There are four types of cetiyas1.

(1) Paribhoga cetiya (ပရိစဘာဂစေတီ): Buddha's personal belongings, such as water strainer, girdle, robes and alms-bowl; also the edifices where anyone of these are enshrined as well as the Bodhi tree where the Buddha attained the Enlightenment.

(2) Dhatu cetiya (ဓာတုစေတီ): anything of Buddha relies or edifices are enshrined.

(3) Dhamma cetiya (ဓမ္မစေတီ ) : any Buddha's teachings recorded on any writing materials like palm-leaf or paper are enshrined.

(4) Uddissa cetiya (ဉဒ္ဒိဿစေတီ) : any images and status of the Buddha.2

There are numerous pagodas in different areas of Myanmar. Even in each region, state and territory has many Buddhist pagodas and temples there are no sufficient class numbers to assign. Cataloguer can assign 294.3435 for all Buddhist pagodas and it can not indicate the location of pagoda in detail. Therefore, the class number for Buddhist pagodas is necessary to expend by its area. Expansion of class number can be done by two ways. The first one is using numerals only. In this ways, the class numbers 294.3435 from DDC Schedule is taken as a base number for Buddhist pagodas. Then, the class number concerning with the area, from DDC Vol-1, Table 1 Standard subdivision (S.S) and Table 2 areas is added to the base number. For example - Religion 2 (From DDC Schedule)

Other and comparative religion 9 (From DDC Schedule)
Religions of Indic origin 4 (From DDC Schedule)
Buddhism 3 (From DDC Schedule)
Doctrines and practices 4 (From DDC Schedule )
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35 (From DDC Schedule )
[ sign of geographic concept to follow ] 09 (From DDC table 1, S.S,)

1 Sar Maung Toe, Buddhism handbook (Yangon : Tetlan Sarpay, 1997), 51.
2 Ibid. 51.

Southeast Asia 59 (From DDC table 2 Area)
Myanmar table 2 Area 11 (From DDC table 2 Area)

Therefore the class number for Buddhist pagodas and temples in Myanmar is 294.343509591.
The class number expanded by this way can make the class number too long and can be more than 12 digits. But it can not represent the location of Buddhist pagodas in detail. It represent for all pagodas located in Myanmar.
The second one is using mix notation. It means using number and alphabet together to shorten class number. When complying with DDC, it is found that DDC used alphabet. The English alphabets are used for the words of William Shakespears in DDC Schedule such as:

A for Authorship controversies,
B for Biography,
D for Critical appraisal 2 … etc.

Such a way, the country Myanmar can be assigned by using one of English alphabet. Instead of using 09 from Standard Subdivision Table 1 and " -591" from Schedule Table 2, the alphabet M is assigned. It means " -09591" is replaced by "M". Here , "M" is extended notation for Myanmar. So the classnumber for Buddhist Pagoda and Temple in Myanmar is "294.3435M". For example

Religion 2
Other comperative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M


Therefore the class number for Buddhist pagodas and temples in Myanmar is 294.3435M. In this paper, the second ways is used through the research because it is shorten the classification number.
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar is delineated and constituted by seven religions, seven states and Union territories in " Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar 2008". In the Constitution, the name of regions and States are arranged according to Myanmar alphabets ( from Ka to Ah) ( ). Each region should be assigned the notation number from 1 to 15 base upon their arrangement stated in the Constitution 2008. Kachin State come first and assigned 1.The Second is Kayah so it is assigned 2. For example-
(ကချင်ြ ပည်နယ် ) Kachin State -1


1 Melvil Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index (New York: Forest, 1979), xxxviii
2 Melvil Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index (New York: Forest, 1979),757.
(ကယားြ ပည်နယ် ) Kayah State -2
( ကရင်ြ ပည်နယ်) Kayin State -3
(ချင်းြ ပည်နယ်) Chin State -4
(ေေ်ကိုင်းတိုင်းစဒသကကီး ) Sagaing Region -5
(တနသာရီတိုင်းစဒသကကီး ) Taninthayi Region -6
(ပဲခူးတိုင်းစဒသကကီး) Bago Region -7
(မစကွေးတိုင်းစဒသကကီး ) Magway Region -8
(မန္တစေးတိုင်းစဒသကကီး ) Mandalay Region -9
(မွေန်ြပည်နယ် ) Mon State -10
(ရခိုင်ြပည်နယ် ) Rakhine State -11
(ရန်ကုန်တိုင်းစဒသကကီး ) Yangon Region -12
(ရှမ်းြပည်နယ် ) Shan State -13
(ဧရာဝတီတိုင်းစဒသကကီး) Ayeyawady Region -14 and
Union territories -151

Therefore propose numbers for Buddhist pagodas, temples in Myanmar are as follow:
Buddhist pagodas, temples in
Expanded numbers
Kachin State
294.3435M-1
Kayah State
294.3435M-2
Kayin State
294.3435M-3
Chin State
294.3435M-4
Sagaing Region
294.3435M-5
Taninthayi Region
294.3435M-6
Bago Region
294.3435M-7
Magway Region
294.3435M-8
Mandalay Region
294.3435M-9
Mon State
294.3435M-10
Rakhine State
294.3435M-11
Yangon Region
294.3435M-12
Shan State
294.3435M-13
Ayeyawady Region
294.3435M-14
Union territories
294.3435M-15

1 Union of Myanmar, Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar 2008.
ကျားဖြူရှင်ဘုရား(Kyā" Prū Rhan̒ Burā") is one of the pagoda located in Kachin State, Myanmar. At first, pagoda is concerning with Buddhism and it is assigned the class number "294.3" in DDC. Then DDC assigned "294.34" for doctrines and practices under Buddhism. Under class number "294.34",it is given instruction that to add class number for pagodas (Cetiyas, Temples, Stupas) go to class number "203-204" in DDC schedule. Then add the n umbers following 20 in "203-204" to the base number "294.34". The class number "203.5" is assigned for pagodas (Cetiyas, Temples, Stupas). The number following 20 in "203-204" is "35" so that take and add it to the based number"294.34".The class number for Buddhist pagodas become "294.3435" 1.According to the second way, using mixed notation, the country Myanmar is represented by "M" and Kachin State is represented by "-1". Therefore the class number for Kyā" Prū Rhan̒ Burā"( ကျားဖြူရှင်ဘုရား) in Kachin State is "294.3435M-1". For example:
Kyā" Prū Rhan̒ Burā"( ကျားဖြူရှင်ဘုရား)in Kachin State.


Religion 2 (From DDC Schedule)
Other and comparative religion 9 (From DDC Schedule)
Religions of Indic origin 4 (From DDC Schedule)
Buddhism 3 (From DDC Schedule)
Doctrines and practices 4 (From DDC Schedule)
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35 (From DDC Schedule)
Myanmar M (Expended notation)
Kachin State -1 (Expended number)
Therefore, the class number for Kyā" Prū Rhan̒ Burā"( ကျားဖြူရှင်ဘုရား)in Kachin State is 294.3435M-1
Ton‘ kwe cetīto‘ (တောင်ကွဲတေေီတော်)in Kayah State
Religion 2 (From DDC Schedule)
Other and comparative religion 9 (From DDC Schedule)
Religions of Indic origin 4 (From DDC Schedule)
Buddhism 3 (From DDC Schedule)
Doctrines and practices 4 (From DDC Schedule)
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35 (From DDC Schedule)
Myanmar M (Expended notation)
Kayah State -2 (Expended number)

Therefore, the class number for Ton‘ kwe cetīto‘ (တောင်ကွဲတေေီတော်)in Kayah State is 294.3435M-2
1 Melvil Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index (New York:Forest,1979).
Shwe yin myo‘ Burā" (တရွှေရင်တ ျှော်ဘုရား) in Kayin Stae
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M

Kayin State -3
Therefore, the class number for Shwe yin myo‘ Burā" (တရွှေရင်တ ျှော်ဘုရား) in Kayin Stae is 294.3435M-3
Mahā man‘ on‘cetīto‘ ( ဟာ ာန်တောင်တေေီတော်)in Chin State.
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Chin State -4
Therefore, the class number for Mahā man‘ on‘cetīto‘ ( ဟာ ာန်တောင်တေေီတော်)in Chin State.is 294.3435M-4
Swam‘" o puÒÒa-shin cetīto‘(ဆွ ်းဦးပုညရှင်တေေီတော်)in Sagaing Region (Division)
Religion 2

Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Sagaing Region -5
Therefore ,the class number for Swam‘" o puÒÒa-shin cetīto‘(ဆွ ်းဦးပုညရှင်တေေီတော်)in Sagaing Region (Division)is 294.3435M-5
Le"kywan‘" cỀmỂ" cetīto‘(တေးကျွန်းဆီ ီးတေေီတော်)in Taninthayi Region (division)
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M

Taninthayi Region -6
Therefore, the class number for Le"kywan‘" cỀmỂ" cetīto‘(တေးကျွန်းဆီ ီးတေေီတော်)in Taninthayi Region (division)is 294.3435M-6
Shwe myat‘ mhan‘Burā" (တရွှေ ျက် ှန်ဘုရား)in Bago Region (division)
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M

Bago Region -7
Therefore, the class number for Shwe myat‘ mhan‘Burā" (တရွှေ ျက် ှန်ဘုရား)in Bago Region (division)is 294.3435M-7
Kyon‘"to‘rā cetīto‘(တကျာင်းတော်ရာတေေီတော်)in Magway Region (Division)
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Magway Region -8
Therefore, the class number for Kyon‘"to‘rā cetīto‘(တကျာင်းတော်ရာတေေီတော်)in Magway Region (Division)is 294.3435M-8
Mahā Muni Burā"( ဟာ ုနိဘုရား)in Mandalay Region (Division)
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35

Myanmar M
Mandalay Region -9
Therefore, the class number for Mahā Muni Burā"( ဟာ ုနိဘုရား)in Mandalay Region (Division)is 294.3435M-10
Kyuik‘ htỀ" yui" cetīto‘ (ကျိုက်ထီးရိုးတေေီ)in Mon State
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35

Myanmar M
Mon State -10
Therefore,the class number for Kyuik‘ htỀ" yui" cetīto‘(ကျိုက်ထီးရိုးတေေီ)in MonState is 294.3435M-10
Mahā muni Burā"( ဟာ ုနိဘုရား)in Rakhine State
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Rakhine State -11
Therefore, the class number for Mahā muni Burā"( ဟာ ုနိဘုရား)in Rakhine State is 294.3435M-11
Shwedagon Burā"(တရွှေေိဂုံဘုရား) in Yangon Region (Division)
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Yangon Region -12
Therefore, the class number for Shwedagon Burā"(တရွှေေိဂုံဘုရား) in Yangon Region (Division)is 294.3435M-12
Bǀ" Burā" (ဗူးဘုရား)in Shan State
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Shan State -13
Therefore, the class number for Bǀ" Burā" (ဗူးဘုရား)in Shan State is 294.3435M-13
Prñña‘ to‘pran‘man‘-on‘ mran‘ muni Burā"(ဖပည်တော်ဖပန် ာန်တောင်ဖ င် ုနိဘုရား)in Ayeyarwaddy Region(Division)
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Ayeyarwaddy Region -14
Therefore,the class number for Prñña‘to‘pran‘man‘-on‘mran‘muni Burā"(ဖပည်တော်ဖပန် ာန်တောင်ဖ င် ုနိဘုရား) in Ayeyarwaddy Region(Division)is 294.3435M-14
Pagodas and temples in Union Territories
Religion 2
Other and comparative religion 9
Religions of Indic origin 4
Buddhism 3
Doctrines and practices 4
Pilgrimages and sacred places 35
Myanmar M
Union Territories -14
Therefore,the class number for Prñña Pagodas and temples in Union Territories is 294.3435M-15

Conclusion

Librarians depends Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme to classify library materials. But the class number represented in DDC is not sufficient for Buddhism and the divided area : regions and states of Myanmar . So the cataloguers faced with unsatisfactory situation in classifying materials on Buddhist pagodas spread out over the whole country. To solve such unsatisfactoty situation, it is needed to expand more class number. There are two ways to expand class numbers. The first one is using pure notation, which is assigning class number complying with Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme. Class number for country code can be taken from "DDC Table 2 Area" and added to the base number. It can make the number too long and cause the user confusion. The second way is shorter then the first and it can describe the area more detail. Especially, using mnemonic "M" for Myanmar can avoid the user confusion.

Then the class number for specific area: regions and states , in Myanmar,They are assigned from 1 to 15. At first, the way to assign class number for the name of such regions is considered. Arranged alphabetically by English alphabet or take the order from " Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar 2008" and assign the number according to such order. It is better to take the order from " Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar 2008". The order of such names is arranged the Union of Myanmar alphabet as appeared in the Constitution 2008.Therefore, the class number is shortening and indicates specific area of Myanmar. Cataloguer can assigned the class number for each pagoda with their location in Myanmar.

This paper is enabling to produce a set of class numbers for Buddhist Pagodas and Temples as an amended numbers for Dewey Decimal Classification Syatem by expending existing numbers. It can provide the classifier in assigning class numbers for Buddhist Pagodas and Temples in detail. These propose numbers for Buddhist Pagodas and Temples will assist in standarding class numbers Buddhism especially specific areas in Myanmar.

Bibliography

ညွန့်ဖ င့်၊ တေါ်။ ေီဃနိကာယ်ပါဠိတော်နှင့် ေ္ဇျ နိကာယ်ပါဠိတော် Thesaurus၊ ပူးေွဲ တရးသားသူ တေါ်ညွန့်ညွန့်တဆွ။ (ကွန်ပျူောပုံနှိပ် ူ) ပိဋကေ်သုံးပုံ(ပါဠိတောဖ န် ာဖပန်)။ ရန်ကုန်၊ သာသနာတရးဦးေီးဌာန၊ ၂၀၀၈။ ပိဋကေ်ပါဠိတော် ဖ န် ာဖပန်ကျ ်း ျား၏ ေဆီေနှေ်သာရကို တြာ်ထုေ်သည့် ိေ်ဆက် ောေ ်း ဖြေ်တသာပါဠိတော်ဖ န် ာဖပန်ကျ ်းဦး ှေ်ြွယ် ျား၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ သာသနာတရးဦးေီးဌာန၊ ၁၉၉၇။

တ ာင်တ ာင်ေိုးေင့်၊ ဦး။ ေူေိုင်းေေွက် ပိဋကေ်သုံးပုံ၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ ယုံကကည်ချက်ောတပ၊ ၂၀၀၂။ တ ာင်တ ာင်ညွန့်( န်းေက္ကသိုေ်) ။ ဖ န် ာနိုင်ငံပါဠိနှင့်ပိဋကေ် ောတပသ ိုင်းသေ်၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ ောတပဗိ ာန်၊ ၂၀၀၃။ ဖ င့်ထွန်း၊ သုတေသီ။ " ေံ့ြွ,်ထူးဖခားဖ န် ာဖပည်ဘုရားတေေီပုထိုး ျား"၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ ေိုးောတပ၊ ၁၉၉၉။ ဖ ေ်တကျာ်၊ဦး (ဖ န် ာောေြွဲ့)။ ဖ န် ာောဖ န် ာ ၍သုေ္တန်ရေနာ၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ ောတပဗိ ာန်၊ ၁၉၉၉။ Ba Khin, U < Sithu. What Buddhism is Rangoon (Yangon): Department of Religious Affiars, 1951. Melvil Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index. New York: Forest ,1979. Ko Lay,U. Guide to Tipitaka. Rangoon (Yangon): Department of Religious Affiars, 1985.