The Simplifier

The Saga of how India's forgotten Emperor was rediscovered after two millennia. The turn of the 19 th century saw a renaissance in unearthing ancient history of India.  The British had been around for 200 years by then and a lot was known about Mughal history, Muslim Sultanates and contemporary Hindu kingdoms.  But systematic knowledge of ancient, pre-Muslim Indian history was scant, and was derived mostly from the Epics, folk stories and guesses. This changed in 1794, when the Asiatic Society of Bengal was set up in Calcutta by William Jones.  Jones was a philologist and studied languages. Setting up the Society allowed him to pursue his interest in studying Hindu culture and learn more about the role of Sanskrit in Indo Aryan languages.  The Society soon became a focal point for gathering information related to India's past.  Amateur researchers, including British officers and soldiers on duty, started sending historical information that they saw or heard. ...

  This is a writeup on the digitalisation of Indian languages - a development which allows millions to use intelligent devices in their native language! (This one is close to my heart, because it involves pioneering work done at my alma mater @IITKanpur, and my first employer CMC Ltd). Warning: This is a long Post.  It starts with a bit of a deep dive into the common features of Indian scripts, identifies the issues for digitalisation and then describes pioneering solutions and pioneering workers. I have stressed more on people and work which I was privileged to see first hand. But there were many other significant contributors. Collective work has brought us where we are today. Let's roll! When you type Indian languages into your phone today, you probably do so on an onscreen "soft" keyboard. It could be a Roman keyboard (the system transliterates to the Indian script as you type), or an Indian language keyboard. Let us take a Devanagari keyboard example. ...