Introduction
It is said that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages. Perhaps it was the language of the Gods.By 2023 India is poised to be home to the largest concentration of software programmers in the world taking over the lead from the USA. Yet there are hardly any programming languages made in India, for the Indic languages. I have been on a quest to enable/empower our future generations to program in native Indic languages.
Life takes a new course
Those days I was heading the AI division of the organisation I used to work for. Thanks to my childhood and upbringing among the scholars of sanskrit, chantings of the vedas and puranas, I could always solve big problems in computer programming with ease when I used sanskrit. There are over 100 programming languages written in English, yet at times we have to write lengthy pieces of code just to achieve a simple task. This is where the knowledge of vedas and the command over sanskrit helped me get over the challenge. Soon, I was able to effortlessly program the Sanskrit way! While I loved the breakthrough achievement, my heart craved for more and felt incomplete. There was something lacking. The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle was still missing. That’s when my eureka moment happened.
The Eureka moment
The years 2019 through 2022 or perhaps 2023 will go into the history of mankind as those which changed the course of lives of millions. Yes, covid-19 changed the course of my life too. Back at home in the nature’s belly of Sagara, a city of Karnataka on the banks of river Varada, I was unwinding from the daily grind just like anyone of us. Being in the lap of mother nature away from the hustle-bustle of life is a beauty in itself. A perfect setting for the eureka moment!. The day was just like any other and I was involved in my daily office work. I could have never imagined that was the day which changed the course of my life. The primary reason for me to adapt to sanskrit to code was to reduce the complexity in coding. However this gave rise to another problem which later went on to become the very seed of founding Shardula-ai. While it helped me code better and faster, my colleagues who were not trained on darshana shaastra and Sanskrit , found it difficult. What was lacking was an ontology from bottom up with reference to computing. It came to a point where I had to decide on giving up on my new found learning or giving up my job. Seeing the impact Sanskrit can create in computing, I chose the latter. On a mission to ensure the future generations do not suffer, I took upon myself the challenge of building an AI system from scratch which is built on the ethos of Indianness, Indian Culture. This is my story, the story of Shardula-ai.
