10 ms·
Bhūribhirbhāribhirbhīrābhūbhārairabhirebhire
- godelmachine 6y ago>>The 34th stanza is the 33rd stanza written backwards, with a different meaning. Finally, the 27th stanza is an example of what has been called "the most complex and exquisite type of palindrome ever invented".[19] It may also be thought of as a syllabic Sator Square. Sanskrit aestheticians call it sarvatobhadra, "perfect in every direction" — it yields the same text if read forwards, backwards, down, or up: It is instances like these when I utterly regret my school not having offered Sanskrit back then. Now I highly doubt if I would ever get the opportunity to learn this beautiful language, ever! Fun fact → In the '80s, a NASA engineer discovered that Sanskrit can be a more viable language in NLP than any formally defined programming language[1] courtesy its constrained grammatical states (to coin a phrase) Ref. [1] https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/466 https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/4...
- KhoomeiK 6y agoIf you're interested in learning Sanskrit, I'd definitely recommend this site [1]. I was able to gain a solid Sanskrit foundation in about a couple months (though I should mention I have amateur linguistics experience which helped). And I'm always a bit skeptical of those Sanskrit NLP claims, but it's interesting nonetheless. [1] https://learnsanskrit.org https://learnsanskrit.org
- godelmachine 6y agoThank you for the link. Apropos of your skepticism, I tried my best to back my claim with a research published by the engineer.
- denzil_correa 6y ago> Apropos of your skepticism, I tried my best to back my claim with a research published by the engineer. The publication is not from a "NASA engineer". Neither does the publication, back up any of your claim.
- srean 6y agoThis claim of NASA endorsing Sanskrit has been debunked many times. Regardless, its a favorite among a particular milieu [0] -- our beautiful heritage stabbed in the back by some evil conspiracy -- and some such. Made up stuff like that hurts the cause more than it promotes. [0]https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/speaking-sanskrit-keeps-diabetes-cholesterol-at-bay-bjp-mp/story-JXglNd7cotTEdnrlUXEdzK.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/speaking-sanskrit-... [1] https://www.quora.com/Is-Sanskrit-compulsory-in-NASA-for-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-research https://www.quora.com/Is-Sanskrit-compulsory-in-NASA-for-AI-...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoTo be fair to OP, they didn't not propagate the urban legend that "NASA uses Sanskrit for AI", as in the quora thread you cite. The OP simply reported that a paper was written by "a NASA engineer" that promotes Sanskrit for NLP. Some of that seems to be true: the paper was indeed written and the contact details of the single author, Rick Brigs, are "RIACS, NASA Ames Research Centeu, Moffet Field, California 94305". That doesn't mean they were a "NASA engineer"- but they probably were a NASA employee. Besides that, there doesn't seem to be any hint that NASA, as an org, adopted the use of Sanskrit for ... something.
- srean 6y agoAll that you said is true, but there is a well funded gaslighting of sorts that goes around in my country along these lines. This flows right from the top, cabinet ministers and all. So there is an understated subtext that is supposed to be understood by Indian readers. Excellent and fair review BTW. I hope you do some reviewing for AAAI, ICML et al
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoThanks. So do I- I need to publish something first :)
- lgessler 6y agoI admit I haven't read the paper, but as someone who works in NLP and is in a linguistics department I have to say that this claim seems absurd. Leaving aside what "viable in NLP" means, all natural languages are rich in ambiguities, redundancies, and hazy polysemy that don't occur in, say, FOL used for knowledge engineering. And Sanskrit, being a natural language, is no exception. If it did turn out that Sanskrit were exceptionally well suited for something in AI, I'm willing to bet that either the domain of AI or Sanskrit (either the systems in its grammar, or our respect for it as a natural language that can only imperfectly be captured by a formalized grammar of it) would need to be so constrained in scope that this supposed exceptionality would seem rather cherrypicked. I'm not saying Sanskrit isn't cool (it's super cool), but I am saying we should resist insinuations that it's somehow more conducive to sophisticated thought or whatever.
- stan_rogers 6y agoThink classical Latin on steroids. Thanks largely to its scriptural use and Pāṇini's absolutely magisterial grammatical description meant mostly to protect the meaning of those scriptures, it was frozen in time at a much more rigid and inflected state than any of its Indo-European cousins. Classical Greek and Latin are slovenly and full of elisions and street usage - recreating infrequently-used grammatical cases using auxiliaries rather than endings/affixes, f'rinstance - by comparison. Grammatical precision in no way prevents the construction of meaningless or muddled utterances.
- marcthe12 6y agoI am curious about Avestan. It is dead and sister of Sanskrt.
- srean 6y agoAs an Indian I have enormous curiosity about Persian culture -- cousins somehow distanced by the force of history. I find so many similarities in language (well of course that's a no-brainer), traditional music, recipes. I met many Iranian people while I was a student in the United States. My experience has been so absolutely wonderful. I don't how much goodwill Iranians have towards Indians, but personally I have a lot towards them. Hopefully would be able to visit sometime. This was impossible while I was a student in US -- without burning bridges that is.
- captn3m0 6y agoI was taught Sanskrit in school (for 3 years, through Junior High School) and this is completely unreadable for me, due to the vocabulary difference and the wordplay. Miles apart from what I was taught.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoThis paper has not influenced NLP or AI very much. It has 26 citations on Semantic Scholar, none of which are "highly influential": https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Knowledge-Representation-in-Sanskrit-and-Artificial-Briggs/b5258311477908037b500b23fb064e311b140a75 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Knowledge-Representati... To be honest, after a cursory reading, it sounds a bit meh and I'm surprised that it was actually published by AAAI.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dagmx 6y agoSanskrit is pretty close to Hindi, so much so that most people can look up Hindi courses online and be able to read Sanskrit without issue. In many ways, Hindi was just an optimization pass on the language. Edit: studied Hindi and Sanskrit in school. Modulo a few things, they’re very similar. Far more so than other linked languages like Latin and its derivatives
- srean 6y agoNot sure what you mean by an optimization pass. Hindi is one of the many vernacular languages derived from Sanskrit. You will find similarities with other vernacular languages derived from it as well, for example, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali. The Indian national anthem and the Indian national song (yeah India has one of each) are in Bengali but they almost sound indistinguishable from Sanskrit to the untrained ear.
- dagmx 6y agoI was speaking to written form language. In written form, Hindi is closest IMHO to Sanskrit versus the other major Indian languages. However it drops certain aspects like explicit अ and a few less common characters. But largely if you can read Hindi, you can read Sanskrit without much issue. Whereas other Indian languages diverged more in their written text form. Though even there, I can read Gujarati text to some degree. I’m ethnically Bengali so I can understand some spoken Bengali but struggle to read any due to the more marked difference in how the letters are formed.
- srean 6y agoAh! that's different. What you are talking about is the Devanagari script. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari That's not the only script that Sanskrit was written in. Devanagari wasn't even the first script that Sanskrit was written in. In fact Sanskrit did not have an 'official' script. Marathi and Gujarati also uses Devanagari with a few minor differences.
- 6y ago
- dekken_ 6y agosimilar but different https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8
- qznc 6y agoWould you accept that in a Hangman game? It beats my previous favorite Eyjafjallajökull. Much harder to memorize though.
- quickthrower2 6y agoThat’s it, next scrum meeting I’m saying mahakavyas instead of epic.
- pritambaral 6y ago'Maha kavya' simply means 'Great poem' or 'Large poem' or ... 'Epic poem', where 'kavya' means 'poem'. So, for your intended use case, I'd suggest saying 'maha' instead of 'mahakavya' since that is closer in semantics to your intention.
- sa1 6y agomaha is just an adjective, epic is both an adjective and a noun. That usage is correct.
- pritambaral 6y agoY̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶e̶x̶c̶l̶a̶i̶m̶ ̶'̶E̶p̶i̶c̶!̶'̶ ̶—̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶s̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶I̶'̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶g̶e̶r̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶f̶e̶r̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶—̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶j̶e̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶m̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶u̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶m̶;̶ ̶i̶.̶e̶.̶,̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶c̶r̶i̶b̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶g̶n̶i̶t̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶w̶e̶s̶o̶m̶e̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶'̶v̶e̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶n̶e̶s̶s̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶'̶g̶r̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶p̶o̶e̶m̶'̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶p̶o̶e̶m̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶s̶i̶z̶e̶,̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶.̶ EDIT: Nvm, I was unfamiliar with the Scrum term.
- ThePadawan 6y agoAn "epic" (noun) is a Scrum term for a collection of stories. I'd say that was the intended usage.
- satishgupta 6y agoCode can indeed be poetry :-)
- svat 6y agoI wrote[1] this Wikipedia article; nice to see it quoted in the wild! Happy to answer questions if any. One thing I'd like to point out is that far from an extinct form, there are Sanskrit poets even today who can compose verses subject to such constraints, and at least two of them[2] even do it “live” on stage—compose with any of the classical constraints, on any given topic!—without pen and paper, as part of a performance[3] interleaved with many other interruptions. Edit: About the verse in the title, just now found a Facebook post[4] that points out it's part of at least 10 such two-consonant verses in that chapter (which also has verses subject to various other constraints). --- [1]: I was not the original creator (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shishupala_Vadha&oldid=148226543 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shishupala_Vadha&...), but added most of the content (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shishupala_Vadha&type=revision&diff=368520655&oldid=247820939 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shishupala_Vadha&...): 90% according to the “Who Wrote That” extension. [2]: Shatavadhani Ganesh https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shatavadhani_Ganesh&oldid=944391300 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shatavadhani_Gane... and Shankar Rajaraman [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Avadhanam&oldid=957164092 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Avadhanam&oldid=9... – excerpts from a recording of such a performance are at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3GnorRNjXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3GnorRNjXE though it's best experienced live! [4]: https://www.facebook.com/sanskritsense/posts/438163406786809 https://www.facebook.com/sanskritsense/posts/438163406786809
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- svat 6y agoThere was a question asking if there exists a recording of the verse mentioned in the title; looks like the post got deleted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23211366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23211366) while I was answering it. Anyway: the Facebook post mentioned above links to their Soundcloud reciting this verse in ominous tones with some modern music. I'm not aware of a more "traditional" recording of the Shishupala Vadha, but there is an earlier work by a different author (Bharavi) whose 15th chapter (canto) has similar constraints (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kir%C4%81t%C4%81rjun%C4%ABya&oldid=941389638#Linguistic_ingenuity https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kir%C4%81t%C4%81r... as mentioned in the article), and there's a recording of that here: https://archive.org/details/kirAtArjunIya-mUlam-vedabhoomi.org/KirataArjuniyam-Sarga015-16-30.mp3 https://archive.org/details/kirAtArjunIya-mUlam-vedabhoomi.o... (extracted from a recording with commentary here: https://archive.org/details/KiratarjuneeyamByMahakaviBharavirecordedByVedabhoomi.org/KirataArjuniyam-Sarga015-1-15.mp3 https://archive.org/details/KiratarjuneeyamByMahakaviBharavi...) — as you listen to the chapter you can easily tell when these two-consonant or one-consonant verses appear :-)
- windex 6y agoMy Indian work colleagues do this a lot. Sanskrit+NASA+India+AI = super power. How is this hacker news?
- jbotz 6y agoHow is this not linguistic hackery?
- satishgupta 6y ago... hackery of epic scale.
- yebyen 6y agoI'm struck with a sense that this poem with a linguistic constraint is a mirror for my life at $dayJob, with some embellishment perhaps... "We want you to write a poem in an obsolete/mostly dead language. And oh, you may only have two consonants per stanza, no more." Vs. "Write and maintain web-based applications in 2020 but do not stray outside of the list of approved languages (Ruby and PL/SQL), no modern advancements such as containers or CI/CD are supported, also, remote debuggers are right out." It was a better analogy in my head, before I wrote it down.
- svat 6y agoI guess a closer analogy is the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (https://www.ioccc.org/ https://www.ioccc.org/): something that requires ingenuity and mastery over the language (Sanskrit or C respectively) and all its dark corners, but is more a dazzling display of cleverness than something appropriate for everyday use. :-)
- pradn 6y agoSanskrit was very much a widely used scholarly and courtly language until the middle of the last millennium.
- majewsky 6y agoThe problem with this analogy: What you describe was an ordinary job maybe 15-20 years ago. If the analogy held, people would have spoken like this poem in daily life at some point.
- mad44 6y agoWatch till the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG62zay3kck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG62zay3kck
- mleonhard 6y ago"Rhabababerbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel" 52 letters :)
- austinl 6y agoThis is the closest thing I've seen to Borges' fictional language described in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. The language has no nouns, so words are made of up sets of adjectives. "moon" becomes "round airy-light on dark" or "pale-orange-of-the-sky". Because of this structure, it was possible to create poems in the language that consisted of a single long word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertiu...
- 1MachineElf 6y agoI'm not sure if this was one of Neal Stephenson's inspirations for his novel Snow Crash, but if it wasn't, then I expect he would be pleasantly surprised by this real-world demo of grammar hackery.
- yumraj 6y agoEven though I had Sanskrit as the third language from 6-8 grades, the way it was taught was mere memorization. I still remember some till today. I wish I was taught better. Are there any sources to relearn Sanskrit from the ground up.
- svat 6y agoI recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD4Ly-G0z5oD9zlmftgeKuNzAJBBTQlc5 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD4Ly-G0z5oD9zlmftgeK... — it may seem slow-going but stick with it. Ignore the Hindi-language parts if you don't understand them; they are an annoyance anyway. You can repeat along to what you hear, to reinforce the language in your head. Otherwise if you prefer text there is http://learnsanskrit.org/ http://learnsanskrit.org/ etc.
- Ayesh 6y agoI grew up in Sri Lanka, where you can go to Buddhist schools from grade 1-12 every Sundays, and they teach a fairly good amount of Paali and Sanskrit. Sanskrit itself is not something you learn, but Paali resembles a lot of it to a point that you can walk up to a document from a thousand years ago and still grasp what it means. I studied only for 4 years, but I'm native Sinhalese, which isn't really that far from Sanskrit.
- yumraj 6y ago> I studied only for 4 years, but I'm native Sinhalese, which isn't really that far from Sanskrit. It's interesting you say that. My native tongue is Hindi, but growing up I had a friend whose mother tongue was Malayalam, and according to him Malayalam was closer to Sanskrit than Hindi. Do you know if there are similarities between Sinhalese and Malyalam?
- Ayesh 6y agoA lot! The script is similar (circles and more circles), and when I watch Malayalam movies, I pick quite a few words.
- jinushaun 6y agoReminds me of "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...