Support

Ambuda is building a complete archive of traditional Sanskrit literature. This is a massive undertaking on an urgent timeline: Sanskrit manuscripts don't last forever, and there is no guarantee that the future will be as peaceful as it is now.

We need to build the capacity and the capital for such an effort before it is too late. We can do so only with your help.

Here is how you can help Ambuda grow:

• Donate to Ambuda
• Use and share Ambuda
• Transcribe and proofread texts
• Contribute a text
• Tag and annotate sentences
• Build our technical platform
• Other open problems

Donate to Ambuda

Use and share Ambuda

If you're short on time, using Ambuda and sharing it with others is the easiest way to help our project.

Let us know how Ambuda has benefited you, and let us know about any issues or errors you encounter as well. Please also share Ambuda with others who might feel the same way as you.

Seeing others use and enjoy our work boosts team morale, and it also helps us recruit more volunteers. Every little bit helps!

Transcribe and proofread texts

As we grow and scale, we will need to transcribe thousands of texts, both in Sanskrit and in translation. We're looking for volunteers to use our new proofreading tool to transcribe and proofread these texts.

Basic work includes:

• Transcribing and proofreading existing projects with the help of automatic transcription tools (OCR).
• Raising issues or problems to more senior proofreaders.

Intermediate work includes:

• Finding Sanskrit texts and translations that haven't been transcribed.
• Supporting new proofreaders by giving advice and reviewing their work.
• Making suggestions and feature requests for our proofreading interface.

Advanced work includes:

• Developing and enforcing proofreading guidelines across all of our projects.
• Supporting and moderating our proofreading community as a whole.

Contribute a text

Tag and annotate sentences

Our analysis tools can generate a word-by-word analysis automatically for many Sanskrit texts. But, these tools still produce many errors, and they need manual correction before we can show them to a user.

Basic work includes:

• Correcting the word splitting (पदच्छेद) of uploaded texts
• Annotating words with their gender, case, number, person, etc.

Intermediate work includes:

• Annotating compounds.
• Creating anvayas.
• Reviewing errors reported by readers.

Advanced work includes:

• Developing and enforcing annotation guidelines across all of our tagged data.

Build our technical platform

Ambuda's technical work is massive and unending, and it touches basically every part of the stack: frontend, backend, infra, storage, databases, security, OCR & NLP, UX and user research, and many more.

Basic work includes:

• Solving small and narrowly scoped technical problems.
• Flagging rough edges in our code and documentation.

Intermediate work includes:

• Solving larger but still well-defined technical problems.
• Communicating with technical team members on design decisions.
• Improving our code health and documentation.

Advanced work includes:

• Solving large and ambiguous technical problems.
• Communicating with non-technical team members on design decisions.
• Owning and maintaining pieces of the project on an ongoing basis.

Other open problems

There are dozens of other important problems that we need to solve for Ambuda to grow properly: community management, fundraising, outreach and marketing, writing blog posts and documentation, sourcing texts, coordination with universities and governments …

If you have a clear idea on how to work on one of these problems, please let us know.

Final thoughts

If Ambuda succeeds, it will fundamentally change how people read and learn Sanskrit. Please help us make this audaciously ambitious project a reality.