CARD: a Database for the Study of Hindu Rituals

CARD is a database for the study of South-Asian culture with Hindu rituals as a main focus.
Cultural elements of various levels are arranged as items in the alphabetical order.
In principle the database uses English. It also contains many Sanskrit words.
Sanskrit words are written following the Kyoto-Harvard method. (The nasal before a guttural consonant is writtenwith ‘n’, not with ‘G’, and the nasal before or after a palatal consonant is written also with ‘n’, not with ‘J’).
Each Sanskrit text is shown in its abbreviated form.
Vedic texts from the SaMhitA up to the ancillary texts to the GRhyasUtras are found with the keyword ‘vedic texts’.
Bibliographical data of each text are given under its full title. In a concrete example, the AtharvavedapariziSTa isfound as ‘atharvavedapariziSTa’. The abbreviation of the AtharvavedapariziSTa is AVPZ. By entering‘atharvavedapariziSTa’ and ‘abbreviation’ you can find its abbreviated form, i. e. AVPZ. Likewise the abbreviationof other texts can be found with their full title and with ‘abbreviation’.
Among the bibliographical data of each Sanskrit text edited texts are found with keyword ‘edition’, theirtranslations with keyword ‘translation’; their contents with keyword ‘contents’; their studies with keyword ‘bibl.’.
The RAmAyaNa, PurANas and DharmazAstras after the ManusmRti are mentioned with their full titles without being
abbreviated.
The abbreviation of MahAbhArata is mbh. The PurANas and DharmazAstras as source material are given with a space
between the name of each text and puraaNa or smRti. In an example, the biographical information of thePadmapurANa is found under the heading of padmapuraaNa, but when it is referred to as source text it is displayed
as padma puraaNa.
Other texts such as the Dharmanibandhas and others and the Buddhist texts are referred to in the non-abbreviatedform.
Due to the limit of storage capacity of floppy disks used in the early stages of its construction, CARD is divided
into 18 files from card1111 to card422. The initial letters and the numbers of each file are as follows: card111 a,
card1112 akSaya, card112 b, card121 c, card122 dhaanya, card211 g, card212 homa, card221 kapaala, card2221
madya, card2222 mantra, card311 n, card312 pavadi, card321 r, card322 saras, card411 t, card412 upendra, card421
viSNu and card422 yuga.
Various kinds of information about the entry word begin after the third tab stop. If the heading is longer than three
tab stops the explanation of the item is displayed after the fourth tab stop.
Most keywords and abbreviations are self-explanatory. As mentioned above the keywords ‘edition’, ‘translation’,‘contents’ and ‘abbreviation’ correspond to equivalent information on Sanskrit texts. Related information withregard to studies on the Sanskrit texts and other entries are indicated by ‘bibl.’; and related items are suggested by‘see’. Subordinate elements of a certain item can be found by using ‘var.’.
One can find all varieties of the Vedic rituals by using ‘zrauta ritual’ or ‘gRhya ritual’ with ‘var.’. It is necessary tofind other kinds of rituals with their individual names. The annual rituals especially described in the PurANas cannot
be found systematically.
An entry of a certain ritual ideally contains the following kinds of information: ‘see’, i.e. related subjects; ‘bibl.’, i.e.

studies of the ritual in question; ‘txt’, i.e. passages describing the ritual in various Sanskrit texts; ‘contents.’, i.e. itscontents; ‘vidhi’, i.e. a description of the ritual in a certain Sanskrit text; ‘note’, i.e. various elements peculiar to acertain ritual, e.g. the time or places of its performance, etc.
Some other keywords with general relevance to the rituals: ‘places of rituals’, various kinds of places other than thenormal ritual ground are indicated with ‘see’; ‘times of rituals’, peculiar times of the performance, ‘ritual act’, anenumeration of elements of ritual acts, ‘fauna’, an enumeration of animals used in the rituals, ‘flora’, anenumeration of plants used in the rituals, ‘metal’, an enumeration of metals, minerals and the likes. Purposes andeffects of the rituals can be collectively found with keywords such as ‘bhaya’, ‘kaama’, ‘phalazruti’, and ‘siddhi’.
Exegetical texts of the Vedic ritual very often identify a number of ritual elements with other items, ideas and thelikes, and examples of the identifications can be found using the wildword character ‘::’; e.g. oSadhayaH (tab) ::aapaH. KS 13.4 [184,14] (kaamyapazu, prajaakaama). In this example means oSadhayaH or plants are identified
with aapaH or waters in a kAmyapazu for one who desires progeny. In another example, ‘aapaH (tab) :: oSadhayaH,
see oSadhayaH :: aapaH (MS, KS, TS)’ indicates that waters are identified with plants, but you may see the place‘oSadhayaH (tab) :: aapaH and the Vedic texts such as MS, KS and TS display the examples.
CARD contains four extra files: pmantr11, pimantr12, pmantr21 and pmantr22. Vedic mantras can be found in M.
Bloomfield’s Vedic Concordance. These four files mainly contain mantras mainly found in the post-Vedic texts.
Mantras in pmantr* are arranged in the alphabetical order of Sanskrit and pmantr11, pmantr12, pmantr21 andpmantr22 begin with a, k, p, and r respectively.
Consider the following example: avasRja punar agne pitRbhyaH // (TA 6.4.2.f) BaudhPS 1.11 [16,5] (pitRmedha).
AgnGS 3.6.3 [151,13] (pitRmedha). As this mantra begins with a, it is found in pmantr11. The quotation of amantra ends with ‘//’. When a mantra originates from the Vedic text, the passage is indicated in parentheses justafter the quotation. After that the occurrences of the mantra and the name of the ritual in which it is used arementioned.

If the user may notice any failures, please inform the editor. His e-mail address is seino1948@gmail.com. By being
updated constantly, I will try to construct a useful database which contains as few failures as possible.
Also, if you write an article using data of this database, please mention that the database CARD was used.