Mission

Ambuda's mission is to make the Sanskrit tradition radically accessible. Specifically, we have three goals:

1. Create a complete archive of traditional Sanskrit literature
2. Publish this archive in an open format.
3. Integrate this archive with intelligent tools for students and scholars.

A complete archive

The Sanskrit corpus is vast. Conservative estimates suggest that there at least 30 million surviving Sanskrit manuscripts. While many of these manuscripts are near-duplicates of each other, they still imply a literature that is rich and overflowing.

Of these manuscripts, only a few are available as published books. Of these books, only a few are available as digital scans. Of these scans, only a few are available as machine-readable text files. And of these files, only a few are reliable and error-free.

There are dozens of online Sanskrit archives that have made sincere efforts to preserve and display some of this vast literature. We are deeply grateful to our predecessors and their work. But sadly, creating a complete archive is a massive and multidisciplinary project, and it requires resources that most projects lack.

We believe that our collective engineering skill can drastically cut the cost of publishing these texts. By doing so, we hope to succeed at this massive task and build an archive that is as complete as possible.

An open format

A complete archive is of no use if it is difficult to access. We must publish this archive as openly as we can and remove the tedious barriers that impede access to Sanskrit literature.

More concretely, we publish our texts on a free and public website under permissive licensing. We ensure that our texts are delightfully readable on a variety of devices. We share our work freely so that users can take what we produce and use it for their own needs, whatever they might be.

Soon, our website will be available in multiple languages. That way, every reader can access and enjoy our collection in their native language.

Intelligent tools

Intelligent tools can remove much of the pointless toil that Sanskrit readers often endure and thereby make the archive more accessible to all.

For curious beginners, our support for side-by-side translations will make it easy to follow along with a Sanskrit text and appreciate the literature.

For Sanskrit learners, our tools will automatically produce a word-by-word analysis for every text in our collection. Integrated dictionary support will allow readers to look up words in their favorite dictionary in less than a second. Sophisticated analysis tools will provide contextual grammar explanations that make paper grammar books almost obsolete.

For more advanced readers, our richly hyperlinked corpus will make it easy to explore connections between different texts and traditions. Full-text search and other dynamic features will give readers powerful tools for exploring all of Sanskrit literature.