सदस्यः:Shubha/प्रयोगपृष्ठम्/शास्त्रमन्थनम्

Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages in the world. Sanskrit is often referred to as the mother of Indo-European Languages. Sanskrit is probably the only surviving language in spite of its antiquity and continues to attract the attention of millions of people from across the world. This is because of the humongous literary works that are available in Sanskrit covering every possible and conceivable aspect of the world. Spiritual texts abound in the language so also Science. Metallurgy or Astronomy, Logic or Mathematics, Social Sciences or Pure Sciences, Administration to Governance, Accountancy to Healing, there is just no end to the amount of literature available that caters to the needs of students of every literary group. Some of the ancient and sacred texts in Sanskrit are The Vedas, The Puranas, The Smritis, The Shastras.

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

The word ‘Shastra’ denotes the scientific treatises composed by Ancient Scholars in Sanskrit pertaining to a particular branch of study and is usually used as a suffix. So Chandas-Shastra indicates the ‘Study of Prosody’, Ganitha-Shastra indicates the ‘Study of Mathematics’ and so on. There are hundreds of such Shastra branches. There are thousands of Shastra works in each of these branches. Together they form the most important link to the ancient and glorious past of Sanskrit Literature and are considered the most critical branch of study in Indology. Unfortunately there is a lack of availability of online material on Shastras which are authentic and well-researched even though there are thousands of such research papers being published for many decades, from more than 500 Sanskrit Departments that exist across the world. These papers are of immense value but many of them are often handwritten in Sanskrit and such manuscripts are submitted for dissertation. Many such valuable contents are lying dormant unavailable to discerning students across the world. No effort is being made to trace them and preserve them for the mankind. Also not more than a couple of such copies have been made and hence their availability for study is practically nil unless some concrete action is taken immediately.

What is your solution?

This proposal endeavours to bring to the public domain, many such research papers published by various Sanskrit Universities in a phased manner. We propose to identify such papers, process them and make them available online through wikisource in both readable and audio format. Every student, enrolling for any research topic, in more than 500 Sanskrit Departments across the world, will be able to access these contents freely. This paves the way for the hidden treasure of Sanskrit literature to be explored for the benefit of the entire humanity.

Project goals

We propose a project for around 3 years in phase-wise manner. Each phase of the project will last for six months. During the 3 year period, around 10,000 Shastric papers will be identified, processed and published online through Wikisource.  

Project plan

Scope

Activites

• The First Phase of the project will be from January - July 2015

• During this Phase, We propose to contact 6 Universities/Patha-shalas in South India. We will be presenting the project plan to the concerned, seek their permission for the publications. We will also request for a list of all the papers published year-wise for the last 3 decades.

• Research Papers published from each of these Universities will be categorised, catalogued and topics identified for publication.

• The authors of each of the selected papers will be contacted for permission.

• Each selected paper will then be typed out in Sanskrit published online with due credits to the university and the author.

• The readable content will be uploaded, published in wikisource.

Roadmap

• In six months we will publish 3000 research papers.

Budget

Total amount requested: (approx) INR 429000

Intended impact

Target audience

• All research students of various departments

• All Indologists, Linguists & Sanskrit enthusiasts

Sustainability

Every student, enrolling for any research topic, in more than 500 Sanskrit Departments across the world, will be able to access these contents freely. This paves the way for the hidden treasure of Sanskrit literature to be explored for the benefit of the entire humanity.