Re-Organising Indian Sastric Traditions (An Old Book)

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The papers presented in this Volume were presented in a National Seminar organised under the auspices of Sanskrit Department Dr. Had Singh Gour University Sagar, with assistance from the University Grants Commission, New Delhi under SAP Scheme. They attempt an in-depth study of the vast gamut of Sastric traditions in Sanskrit with a view to present these traditions in a more coherent and systematic way through new analytical or scientific techniques. These papers bring out a world view of our S'5stric traditions.

Dr. Radhavallabh Tripathi is at present working as Professor and Head of the Department of Sanskrit, Dr. Hari Singh Gour University of Sagar. He has published 75 research papers and 54 books, and has completed a number of research projects. He specialises in Nityasastra and Sahityaastra.

He has been editing three Research Journals - Natyam (Hindi Qly.), Sagarika. (Sanskrit Qly.) and Madhyabharati (bi.lingual, bi-annual).

Dr. Tripathi has received 15 awards, mostly of National level, including M.M. P.V. Kane memorial Gold Medal of Asiatic Society, Bombay (for best research work of 1995) and the Sahitya Akademi Award of 1994 for creative writing in Sanskrit.

Dr. Achyutananda Dash is Reader in the Department of Sanskrit, Dr. Had Singh Gour University of Sagar. He has published 15 research papers in various journals of International level alongwith three books and has studied NyWya and VySkarana with Pt. Shrinivas Shastri at Pune. He has worked with Prof. S.D. Joshi as a researcher and subsequently as a sub. Editor in the Sanskrit Dictionary Project at Deccan College. He specialises in Vyakarana and Linguistics. He has been a guest lecturer at Oxford and was also awarded Common Wealth Fellowship (UK).

Indian gastric traditions have developed in multiple streams and they have ever been receptive to new thinking. The develop-ment of each gastra has involved a process of its re-organisation in some form or the other. Be it the debates or discourses presented through the dialogues between the purvapaksa and uttarapaksa, or various channels of interpretation like bhasya, sarhgraha, parikara gloka, anuvathgya aloka, karika, vrtti, curnika, phakkika and a host of others, the primary concern of the gastrakaras was to meet the challenges presented by the changed situations and to re-organise their system of thought with a view to make it more versatile and dynamic. The growth of several systems of Indian philosophy, various schools of Vyakarana and the grammar-books written by authors like Hemacandra, Dharmakirti, Varadaraja and a host of others, as well as the interactions and debates between acityas of Alankaragastra testify the aliveness of our gastric traditions which still sustains them. Therefore we find that new grammars or texts in philosophy are being written in Sanskrit with the same zeal.

The Process of re-organisation is a mark of the living traditions and their receptivity to the new thought. It also involves interaction between tradition and modernity.

In our age, Computers have made their place in academic world. Manuscripts are being digitised. Manuscripts can be obtained from remote places through Electronic Mail. A world wide web is being created. In Western countries every book-shop has a section of CD-roms. Study of literature and sastras through computer is opening new vistas of critical analysis and evaluation.

Sanskrit Studies in the last two decades of this century found a new impetus through their interaction with Computer based knowledge. In 1985 and 1986 Rick Briggs, a computer scientist working at RIACS, NASA in USA published the following papers in Artificial Intelligence Magazine -

1. Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence.

2. Shastric Sanskrit as a Machine Translation Interlingua.

The publication of these papers heralded an era of new investigations, querries and experimentations with respect to gastras and data-base knowledge. Even though the contentions of Rick Briggs were met with mixed reactions and counter reactions, the possibilities emerging through them could not be denied altogether. Recently, joint efforts of computer scientists and Sanskrit scholars in this direction have started yielding somefruitful results. The tech-niques of Navya-nyaya and Paninian linguistic models were found useful for 4NLP and Al. On the other hand, the computational techniques came to be utilised for preparing data-base of our gastras, with a view to extend their frontiers and stimulate and enliven the gastric studies with modem scientific methods of analysis. An ac-tive inter-relationship between computer science and Sanskrit kistras thus can be evolved and both of them can go hand in hand together to enrich various disciplines under each.

The C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advance Computing) established in 1989 by Govt. of India with its head office at Pune has been active in both these directions. It has been going ahead with a systematic plan for computer recording of Astadhydyi. Data-base for sevaral other texts have been prepared or stored at the Banglore office of C-DAC, where Vedavaridhi P. Ramanujan has been preparing softwares based on Panini-Vyakarana, Mirnathsa and Vedas.

**Contents and Sample Pages**