Webinars

SANSKRIT, LINGUISTICS AND AI By GIRISH NATH JHA

The talk, while presenting the nuances of Indian multilingual situations, will focus on similarity of methods used in Sanskrit grammar, Linguistics and AI. In this context, there will be a presentation of the contributions of Panini, Saussure and Chomsky leading to the emergence of computational linguistics and AI. The National Education Policy of India launched in 2020 lays special emphasis on Mother Tongue education which poses real implementation challenges considering the multitude of languages and speech communities in India. While discussing the challenges posed by educating the millions in India, requirements of a flexible, scalable and cost-effective AI will be presented. The talk will survey the work being done in this area and will present implementation challenges and suggest solutions for designing, developing and deploying smart systems for delivering multilingual content.

The Nature of Endangerment in India: Tigers, 'Tribes', Extermination & Conservation, 1818-2020

Perhaps no category of people on earth has been perceived as more endangered, nor subjected to more preservation efforts, than indigenous peoples. And in India, calls for the conservation of Adivasi culture have often reached a fever pitch, especially amongst urban middle-class activists and global civil society groups. But are India’s ‘tribes’ really endangered? Do they face extinction? And is this threat somehow comparable to the threat of extinction facing tigers and other wildlife? The talk combines years of fieldwork and archival research with intensive theoretical interrogations-about what is perceived to be the fundamental question for nearly all indigenous peoples in the modern world: the question of survival.

Conferences

Workshop on Appayya Dīkṣita: July 8-12, 2024

The India Centre, FLAME University organised an international reading workshop on Appayya Dīkṣita from July 8 to 12, 2024.

The sixteenth to eighteenth century was a vibrant time in Sanskrit intellectual culture, and recent scholarship has demonstrated that a study of Sanskrit intellectual culture during this period is also important for our understanding of various developments in colonial and post-Independence India. A figure who shaped various disciplines in Sanskrit intellectual culture during this period, and exemplified many of the tendencies that informed it, was Appayya Dīkṣita (1520-1593), a figure who has drawn much scholarly attention over the past decade. Scholars are coming to realise that not only was Appayya an exceptional thinker with contributions in ritual hermeneutics, grammar, metaphysics, soteriology, and aesthetics, but that he reshaped most of these fields for the next several centuries.

In a five-day-long intense international workshop organised by the India Centre, specialists from various parts of India and the world came together to read three key works in Appayya Dīkṣita’s oeuvre: the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā (a Vedānta work), Citramīmāṃsā (a work within alaṅkāra, a branch of Sanskrit aesthetics), and Vidhirasāyana (a work in Mīmāṃsā, or Vedic ritual hermeneutics). The Śivārkamaṇidīpikā is a fascinating work where Appayya has commented on the writings of a figure called Śrīkaṇṭha. At the workshop, the participants focused particularly on Appayya’s citational practices and his employment of a variety or reading strategies in his scriptural exegesis as he commented on some of Śrīkaṇṭha’s verses. They also discussed in some details Appayya’s engagement with Mīmāṃsā (Vedic ritual hermeneutics) in his Vedānta writing. This led to interesting conversations about how scriptural authority played out around the sixteenth century, what texts may have been current at the time, and how Appayya employed different kinds of strategies to varied ends.

The AI Centre at FLAME University discussed their work with Devanagari manuscripts and OCR with the workshop participants.