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opensource project makes 11th c. Kannada verses searchable

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From the «but does it rhyme?» department:
Title: Open Source Project Brings 11th Century Kannada Verses Online
Author: Pavithra Hanchagaiah, Omshivaprakash HI and Subhashish Panigrahi
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 13:11:48 -0400
Link: http://fossforce.com/2014/04/open-source-project-brings-11th-century-kannada-verses-online/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=open-source-project-brings-11th-century-kannada-verses-online

Vachana sahitya[1] is a form of rhythmic writing in Kannada[2] poetry that
evolved in the 11th century C.E. and flourished in the 12th century as a part
of the Lingayatha[3] movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers)
have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses which were
published in a 15 volume set, “Samagra Vachana Samputa,” by the Government of
Karnataka, a state in South West India, have been digitized. Two Wikimedians
along with Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy are involved
in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing the preface for these
verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called
Vachana Sanchaya[4] and ready to enrich Kannada WikiSource.
[image 5]

Palm leaf[6] of 11th and 12th Century with Vachana poems in Kannada language

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash
was trying to help Professor O. L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and
publisher Vasudhendra to easily access the vachana (verses) of Vachana
Sanchaya. Swamy had challenges in using publicly available content on
Vachanas since the data was in ASCII and searching text was a huge problem.
Pavithra Hanchagaiah started helping to collect information about about
vachanas and document them into Unicode by writing scripts to customize open
source software to convert the Kannada fonts from ASCII into Unicode.

[image 7]

Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash H L
After further discussions, it was decided to get thousands of vachanas into a
database, making them easily searchable with an index. This required us to
build a platform on which this could be done. The fruits of our labors will
help linguistic researchers and students as well as the public at large,
anybody who’s interested in reading and studying Vachana literature.

With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model and his colleague
Devaraju started building it. In the meantime, Pavithra was running various
scripts to fix errors in the conversion of the ASCII text to Unicode,
confirming that the data was ready to be consumed by the modules developed
for the concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project
from home and would sync up once in a while online.

With constant feedback and guidance from Mr. Swamy and Vasudendra, we learned
how a concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it
easier for them to do their research. Omshivaprakash worked on the
architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements and
managed the entire project. Free and open source software technologies were
used for keeping the platform active. Pavithra was involved in providing
critical hacks for digitization and offered valuable input through
suggestions, feedback and Q&A.

Working system

At present, the system has around 200,000 unique words in the repository. It
was an extensive learning process, as we used our free time to solve real
time issues. Moreover, it was a work of the Kannada language that needed
quick attention. Vachana Sanchaya is meant to be more than just a repository
of the text online; it’s meant to be a tool for researchers.

For example, as a user searches the words on our system, he or she can see
who has used the word in which Vachanas. To improve readability, the searched
text string is highlighted in each Vachana that is displayed. To repeat the
search for a specific Vachanakaara, the user needs only to click on his or
her name on the graph provided on the result page. We have used the MediaWiki
jquery-ime input tool architecture that helps us provide the user with the
ability to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for a search.

Public Response

We are glad to see people accessing vachanas from our Facebook[8], Twitter[9]
and Google+ channels. Thousands read them every day and it has become a part
of many people’s daily routine. There have been more than 50,000 page views
on social networks and 500,000 page views on our site in the first few months
after our platform’s public launch. Some of the most commonly searched
Kannada words are “ಕರ್ಮ”(Karma en: Work/Deed), “ಸತ್ಯ” (Sathya en:
Truthfulness) and “ನದಿ” (River).

ಆಂಗೀರಸ, ಪುಲಸ್ತ್ಯ, ಪುಲಹ, ಶಾಂತ,
ದಕ್ಷ, ವಸಿಷ್ಠ, ವಾಮದೇವ, ನವಬ್ರಹ್ಮ, ಕೌಶಿಕ, ಶೌನಕ, ಸ್ವಯಂಭು, ಸ್ವಾರೋಚಿಷ, ಉತ್ತಮ,
ತಾಮಸ, ರೈವತ, ಚಾಕ್ಷಷ, ವೈವಸ್ವತ, ಸೂರ್ಯಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಚಂದ್ರಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಸಾವರ್ಣಿ,
ಇಂದ್ರ ಸಾವರ್ಣಿ ಇವರು ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತು ಮಂದಿ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ ಸಹಾಯ[ದ]ವರು. ಹತ್ತೊಂಬತ್ತು
ಎಂದರೆ ಪುಣ್ಯನದಿಗಳು. ಅದು ಎಂತೆಂದಡೆ: ಗ್ರಂಥ
– An example of a vachana from the Vachana Sanchaya project.

Plans for the future

Our system is extensible with respect to adding new features. We have a
review desk for researchers to help with the review of content. Later we will
be adding required references to Vachanas from various research works on this
literature. The content is available for the public through OpenData API and
will be distributed in the public domain through WikiSource once the review
work is complete. This will open up the system for students, developers,
researchers and anyone interested in working to build linguistic tools for
Kannada and other Indic languages.

This system will evolve so it can be used for other literature projects.
Vachana Sahitya will further help us to initiate Natural Language Processing
(NLP) projects if more researches get together to tag the words, glossary,
etc. We can also add various language tools such as a spell checker and
grammar checker through crowd-sourcing development. The forthcoming project
under the “Kannada Sanchaya” are Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya
which are already in the pipeline. Our idea is to extend this platform to
include works from antiquity (Vyasa, for example) to the early 20th century
(e.g., Muddanna) and possibly even include contemporary literature that’s
available in the public domain.

Related posts:

1.Is Microsoft Committed to Open Source?[10]
2.Atlanta Meets Open Source at ‘Great Wide Open’[11]
3.What a Layperson Can Gain From an Enterprise Open Source Conference[12]

[image 13]

Links:
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vachana_sahitya (link)
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_language (link)
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingayatism (link)
[4]: http://vachana.sanchaya.net/ (link)
[5]: http://fossforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Plam_leaf__Vachanas-e1396369246877.jpg (image)
[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-leaf_manuscript (link)
[7]: http://fossforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Pavithra_Shivu_-_Profile_Picture.jpg (image)
[8]: https://www.facebook.com/vachanasanchaya (link)
[9]: https://twitter.com/vachanasanchaya (link)
[10]: http://fossforce.com/2013/10/microsoft-committed-open-source/ (link)
[11]: http://fossforce.com/2014/03/atlanta-meets-open-source-great-wide-open/ (link)
[12]: http://fossforce.com/2014/03/what-a-layperson-can-gain-from-an-enterprise-open-source-conference/ (link)
[13]: http://yarpp.org/pixels/a56c9b56d3beac481b51e6429f42409a (image)

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opensource project makes 11th c. Kannada verses searchable RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-04-08 11:10 +0000

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