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>>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 compl

>>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 ago
If 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 ago
  Thank 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 ago
This 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 ago
  To 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 ago
    All 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 ago
      Thanks. So do I- I need to publish something first :)
lgessler 6y ago
I 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 ago
  Think 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 ago
    I am curious about Avestan. It is dead and sister of Sanskrt.
    - srean 6y ago
      As 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 ago
I 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 ago
This 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
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dagmx 6y ago
Sanskrit 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 ago
  Not 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      Ah! 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

KhoomeiK 6y ago

If 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 ago
Thank 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 ago

This 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 ago
To 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 ago
  All 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 ago
    Thanks. So do I- I need to publish something first :)

lgessler 6y ago

I 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 ago
Think 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 ago
  I am curious about Avestan. It is dead and sister of Sanskrt.
  - srean 6y ago
    As 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 ago

I 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 ago

This 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 ago

Sanskrit 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 ago
Not 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Ah! 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