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Ambuda Q2 Plan

Created 1 year ago

Despite the normal up and downs of daily life, Ambuda has continued to make steady progress toward its goal. This post summarizes our work in 2023 and our plans for the next three months.

Q1 in Review

Our main progress this quarter is that we’ve proofread a few dozen new texts and translations, many of which will soon find their way onto our library. The full list is:

  • Shivatandavastotra + commentary
  • Dakshinamurty Stotra + commentary
  • Vayu Stuti + commentary
  • Tripuravijayachampu
  • Meghaduta with Vidyullata
  • Nataraja Stuti + commentary
  • Shivamahimna stotra
  • Damodaramadhavastotra
  • Meghaduta (Kannada translation)
  • Suryashataka
  • Somanathashataka
  • Vivekacudamani + vyakhya
  • Madhuravijaya + translation
  • Anyoktimuktalata
  • Dashavatarastotra + commentary
  • Kavyashiksha
  • Kadambarisangraha
  • Political Concepts in Ancient India
  • Aryasaptashati
  • Madhva Vijaya (Kannada translation)
  • Vivekacudamani (Kannada translation)
  • Yoga-Sankhya-Kosha
  • Sangraha-Ramayana (Kannada translation)
  • Chandishataka + commentary
  • Shankara Vedanta Kosha (headwords)
  • Kushakumudvatiya Nataka

Our user base has likewise grown from 1800 monthly users to 3000 monthly users. While short of our goal of 4000, this is still a 66% increase with no explicit outreach on our part.

On the technical side, our Vidyut engine continues to progress, but we need a little more time to incorporate it into our website. For our Paninian derivation engine, our major progress includes:

  • Substantial progress on prefixed verbs, including support for words like sañcaskāra, samudyāt, and various retroflexions of n and s after certain prefixes.

  • Substantial progress on sanādi-dhātus. Our last major edge case is on verbs where the abhyāsa is elided (mitsati, lipsati, etc.), and once these are complete, we will be ready to incorporate this library into Ambuda.

  • Substantial progress on subantas (nominals), including sarvanāmas (pronouns).

  • Substantial progress on kṛt (verbal) suffixes, including uṇādi suffixes.

  • Partial support for taddhita (nominal) suffixes.

  • Explicit tests for more than 600 Ashtadhyayi sutras based on the Kashika Vrtti.

One Year of Ambuda

Our top priority is still to grow our end-to-end pipeline for Sanskrit texts. For details, see the notes in our Q1 post from a few months ago.

Therefore, our goals for the end of Q2 are as follows:

  • Our library will have a total of 50 primary texts on our website. (Current: 18.)

  • Our library will have at least 10 translations and commentaries. (Current: 0.)

  • Our library will have, at minimum, 5000 monthly active users. (Currently: 3000.)

  • Our Vidyut work will be fully integrated into Ambuda, both for our dictionary and for our proofing work. (Currently: no integration.)

Closing Thoughts

We started work on Ambuda on 1 June 2022, which means that Ambuda is almost a year old. Although our project has come a long way, we still have a long way to go, and I am happy to see our investments in our core technology start to bear fruit.

Our work is just beginning. Thank you for supporting Ambuda.

Arun Prasad

1 April 2023

Appendix: Funds as of 2023-04-01

We are currently running a deficit of a few thousand dollars, which is workable for now but not sustainable. If you would like to support our work, please give us the gift of a donation so that we can continue. 100% of the money we receive goes to proofreaders in India and toward basic operations costs, such as web hosting.