SAIIER 2021:Sanskrit Research Institute
 Laboratory of Evolution - Centre for Human Unity (LOE-CHU) |
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 Agni Veda Research |
| Entity::Sanskrit Research Institute by Martin Gluckman | ||
Sanskrit Research Institute exists to delve deeply into the Sanskrit language and its immense literature and make it more accessible for all. The Sanskrit language contains the vast entirety of Indian history, culture, civilization, philosophy and wisdom. Sanskrit was very dear to the hearts of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and is also a very key part of Auroville’s identity, being one of the official languages of Auroville and the Mother wanting Sanskrit to be the official language of India.
This year we focused deeply on our Sanskrit Archive project which is a multi-year project working to create a detailed map of extant Sanskrit literature. Progress has been excellent and we are currently annotating a database of 150,000 Sanskrit works, authors and commentaries with a team of 5 volunteers. In parallel we created a web portal to a public archive of Aufreght’s Catalogus Catalogorum and a mirror of the 2.1m manuscripts in the National Mission for Manuscripts database.
Other highlights are a collaboration with the University of Cape Town assisting them with an endangered language project for Khoisan languages. The Khoisan languages are of the oldest languages known to mankind and span geographies in Southern Africa that have housed the oldest people (the Sān people).
We were also invited to collaborate on the ADTP (Ayurveda Developmental Therapeutics Program), a project with Vijay P. Bhatkar and other eminent scientists to help create digital references to the Ayurvedic literature to assist with discovery of new treatments and encourage research on these therapeutics.
Activities and outcomes of the year:
1. Sanskrit Archive: Our entire team (Sashka, Gauri, Nitin, Prasidha & Gali) are currently focused on the Sanskrit Archive project which aims to create a portal to explore extant Sanskrit literature. Currently we have 5 volunteers manually ‘tagging’ a database comprising 152,500 works, commentaries and authors of Sanskrit literature. Over the last year we created a digital database and tagging tool and currently 15% of the literature has been tagged. Dinesh had spent 2020 volunteering at SRI to help develop the web portal that indexes the core data and also to create the collaborative tagging tool.
2. Endangered Language Project: We were invited to collaborate with the University of Cape Town (UCT), assisting to create a digital archive and linguistic tools for endangered Khoisan languages (N\uu and Khoekhoegowab). The invitation was extended after we delivered a lecture at UCT last year. This is part of our outreach work to extend the works done with Sanskrit to benefit other languages and cultures. India and Africa had a long and well documented history.
3. Ayurveda Developmental Therapeutics Program: We were invited to collaborate with Dr. Vijay Bhatkar on the Ayurveda Developmental Therapeutics Program which is working to create digital databases of the Ayurvedic literature for the purpose of aiding discovery of new useful medicines from the corpus and to further research into these medicines. Our expertise working with digital Sanskrit literature is being offered to this project.
4. Articles and Interviews: Martin was interviewed by Soft Power Magazine in April (www.softpowermag.com/serving-sanskrit-serving-humanity-the-story-of-martin-gluckman/). Australian National University also conducted an interview in June which will be published shortly.
5. SRI Campus: We have received support for constructing a campus for SRI in Auroville which would include a facility for our research team and accommodation for volunteers as well as some exhibition space. Over the course of 2021-2022 we will be looking into this in more detail along with feasibility and suitable potential sites.
6. Award nominations: In February this year we were nominated by the Consul-General of Cape Town Mr. Ashok Bapu for a “ICCR World Sanskrit Award”.
Research highlights:
The theme of the year has been aligned with understanding the vastness and the magnitude of Sanskrit literature. Sashka directed the team of volunteers working with the literature, we have a team spanning multiple continents and nations and it is deeply touching to see how people are transformed working in Auroville and with the Sanskrit literature.
In terms of research output this year we are slowly creating the tapestry of a vast and complex interlinked map of Sanskrit works, authors and commentaries (which relate to Sanskrit works). Many are little known or completely unknown and then there are many that are famous and have reached farthest corners of the world (like the Pañcatantra). The more unknown and lesser known works we find the more we are inspired to publish this work and make it available so the living lost memory of India’s great literature can be discoverable.
Reflections:
As with previous years we are deeply touched by the amount of goodwill our project is attracting in terms of volunteership and the impact on people who encounter this field of work. Besides our 5 active volunteers who are working on the Sanskrit Archive project, we have a constant stream of applications to volunteer and help with our works. Observing gift economics in action firstly deepens the beauty of the fruits of our labour and also aligns our work with the core ethics of Auroville to move into a new economic paradigm for the world based on the economics of love and service to the Divine.
Conclusion:
During the year ahead we aim to complete the ‘tagging’ project, at the current pace we expect it to be completed within 6-9 months. Simultaneously to the tagging work, Nitin and Geffen are working on an automated ‘auto-tagger’ to speed up this process and improve the accuracy. Once the work of the tagging is completed we will make available a portal to explore extant Sanskrit literature and to admire it in all its entirety. This has long been our ‘moonshot’ project and though not very near to the goal, each step along the way has taken us a little closer.
