Digitisation of Sanskrit lore stressed

Tirupati: The Sanskrit fraternity has a key role and a major responsibility in digitizing the Sanskrit lore for preserving and developing it to suit the need of present-day system and for the benefit of future generation, said Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha (RSVP) Vice-Chancellor (V-C) Prof V Muralidhara Sharma.

Speaking after the inauguration of five-day national workshop on 'Digitised Sanskrit Corpus' in RSVP here on Friday, Sharma said that the Vidyapeetha as a premier Sanskrit institution of excellence aimed to create e-publication for all texts, that have not seen the light, as its contribution towards digitisation of Sanskrit literature.

The national workshop is being organised jointly by RSVP's ICT Lab in collaboration with Samskrita Bharathi, Bengaluru and Samskrit Promotion Foundation, New Delhi. The V-C said that the workshop intends to provide a common platform to the Sanskrit faculty more so the research scholars of all Sastras in the Vidyapeetha.

The RSVP will observe coming 2019-20 academic year as Sanskrit Tech Year to accelerate digitisation of Sanskrit lore. In this direction, number of creative plans and ideas are to be implemented. This include mobile attendance, digitisation of entire Sanskrit texts available in RSVP library i.e., more than 1.2 lakh texts. Paperless administration, Sanskrit Wikipedia and ARPIT-Annual Refresher Programme for in-service teachers.

Out of 800 universities in the country, only 11 universities including RSVP selected to this project (ARPIT), he said adding that RSVP stood first in the project. Dr B Chandrasekharam, ICT Lab Co-coordinator explained the aims of the workshop and also the topic taken up for discussion during the five-day meet.

The chief guest of the programme Dr Sachin Katale told that the digitisation of Sanskrit books will give lot of scope for scholars, particularly to young budding research scholars to augment their work culture in a smooth manner.

As many as 108 research scholars of different streams in RSVP participating in the workshop. RSVP Registrar Prof GSR Krishnamurthy, Academic Dean Prof Rani Sadasiva Murthy and others also spoke.