News

On March 19-20, 2024, a workshop titled “Exploring the Potential of Utilizing Data from Sanskrit Literature” will be held at Lecture Room 2, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University. The invited speaker for the event is Oliver Hellwig from the University of Zurich.
Please register using Google form here: https://forms.gle/NcDrsim8psM5xgfd9 
Download flyer: PDF 4MB

On August 8, 2023, at the 51st Visualization Symposium Japan 2023 held at Grand Park Otaru, Hiroaki Natsukawa and Kyoko Amano presented on the theme “Visual Analysis of Co-occurrence Relationships in Ancient Indian Liturgical Texts.”
Click here for the program: https://www.vsj.jp/symp2023/program.html 

During the DH2023 Workshop held at the University of Graz, in the session “SIG-DLS Seven Years on” on July 10, 2023, Yuki Kyogoku, Yuki Tsukagoshi, So Miyagawa, and Kyoko Amano presented on the topic “Comparative Analysis of Vedic Sanskrit Documents Using Doc2Vec and Transformer Models.” In the same session, with So Miyagawa as the lead author, the team also presented “Analyzing Text Similarity in Vedic Sanskrit Texts: A Bipartite Approach Using Stylometry and Text Reuse Detection.”
Click here for the program: https://dls.hypotheses.org/1340 

Yuki Tsukagoshi published “The Current State of Vedic Literature Studies from the Perspective of Digital Humanities” in Issue 142 [Part 1] of Digital Humanities Monthly. The publication is scheduled to appear later on the Digital Humanities Monthly website: https://www.dhii.jp/DHM/ 

Visualization tool for the relationships among the Vedic texts using co-occurrence of ritual mantras is available here:
http://ancient-india.natsukawa-lab.jp/ 

Kyoto University SPIRITS, Project Achievements and Future Prospects 2020-2021 is published in Kyoto University Research Information Repository KURENAI:
https://research.kyoto-u.ac.jp/spirits/s2020/ 
Kyoko Amano joined SPIRITS Roundtable Discussion “Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences” in Intro Feature.

Kyoko Amano and Hiroaki Natsukawa gave a presentation titled “Visualization of the relationship among Vedic texts and observation of the development of Yajurveda texts” at A Three Day International Seminar on Paninian Grammar & its Applications on February 14, 2023.

Oliver Hellwig, Sven Sellmer, Kyoko Amano gave a presentation titled “The Vedic corpus as a graph. An updated version of Bloomfield’s Vedic Concordance” at The 18th World Sanskrit Conference 2023 on January 12, 2023.

The previous project “Chronological and Geographical Features of Ancient Indian Literature Explored by Data-Driven Science” is published on SPIRITS website:
https://research.kyoto-u.ac.jp/spirits/jp2020/jp2020_019/ 

The collection of the slides of the Workshop “Ancient India meets Data Science” held on February11, 2022 is available here (PDF 9.9MB) 

The second and concluding Workshop of our project “Ancient India meets Data Science” was held on February 11, 2022. Videos are available in “Events” page (the 2nd Workshop) or from the links below:
Kyoko Amano https://youtu.be/6i_Hb3PeV6k 
Hiroaki Natsukawa https://youtu.be/97ap2VvcXa0 
Yuki Kyogoku https://youtu.be/8CHr9m_jDfc 
So Miyagawa https://youtu.be/wcz_6yG2z2A 
Oliver Hellwig, Sebastian Nehrdich https://youtu.be/g-J8eGTDlvs 
Concluding remark by Oliver Hellwig https://youtu.be/e4GabJOEsqo 

Prior to the coming Workshop, we released the recording of the Workshop 2021. Videos are available in “Events” page (The 1st Workshop) or from the links below:
Opening (Kyoko Amano) https://youtu.be/lqui4kWUnWo 
Hiroaki Natsukawa https://youtu.be/OqEJMSTwewg 
Kyoko Amano https://youtu.be/bxQOeuKR5sQ 
Shun Hamachi https://youtu.be/MWogMERLhJg 
Yuki Kyogoku https://youtu.be/t2HOjzkLi_I 
Oliver Hellwig https://youtu.be/FfVGR3hyO0s 
Shigeki Moro https://youtu.be/fffD2Q8IqYk 
Discussion https://youtu.be/9MjnpnLGrfo 

The second and concluding workshop of this project “Ancient India meets Data-Science” will be held on Feburary 11, 2022 (16-19 JST = 8-11 CET).
Please register using Google form here: https://forms.gle/5ZSxvieyHhArV2gF9 
Download Flyer （PDF 601KB） 

On Feburary 11, 2022 (16-19 JST = 8-11 CET), the second and concluding workshop of this project “Ancient India meets Data-Science” will be held online. It is also a Kick-off of our new project “A Study of Language Layers in Vedic Literature for the Development of a Program for Age-Estimation” (FY2021-FY2026). Program and register form will be available soon!

The Project “A Study of Language Layers in Vedic Literature for the Development of a Program for Age-Estimation”, planned as a successor to this project, has been adopted for Fostering Joint International Research (B) of KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research). The research period is from FY2021 to FY2026.

As new project member, So Miyagawa (Kyoto University, Graduate School of Letters
Center for Cultural Heritage Studies and Inter Humanities) is joining the project.
researchmap: https://researchmap.jp/SoMiyagawa 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2950-7193 
Website: https://somiyagawa.de/ 

On October 23, 2021, Kyoko Amano gave a presentation titled “Historical Background of the Formation of the Veda in Ancient India, as Deciphered from the Visualization of the Influence Relations among the Vedic Texts” at KUDH (Kyoto University Digitization Hub of the Humanities, Social and Cognitive Sciences) International Conference 2021.
The video is here: https://youtu.be/PP_3w4Xzyt8 

Kyoko Amano’s essay, “Ancient Indian Philology and Digital Humanities: From the Perspective of a Non-digital Researcher,” describing the process leading up to the launch of this project, has been published in The Hakubi Center Newsletter vol.19:
https://www.hakubi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/application/files/4316/3036/7313/Newsletter019.pdf 

Two papers by Oliver Hellwig dealing with Vedic Treebank (Universal Dependencies) have been published:

– Erica Biagetti, Oliver Hellwig, Sarvatore Scarlata, Elia Ackermann, Paul Widmer: “Evaluating Syntactic Annotation of Ancient Languages. Lesson from the Vedic Treebank”. In: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia (2021), 1-32. DOI:10.1163/26670755-01010003.
https://brill.com/view/journals/ow/1/1/article-p1_3.xml 

– Oliver Hellwig, Salvatore Scarlata, Elia Ackermann, Paul Widmer: “The Treebank of Vedic Sanskrit”. Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020), Marseille, 11–16 May 2020 c European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC. 5137–5146.
https://aclanthology.org/2020.lrec-1.632/ 

Kyoko Amano will give a presentation titled “Historical Background of the Formation of the Veda in Ancient India, as Deciphered from the Visualization of the Influence Relations among the Vedic Texts” at KUDH (Kyoto University Digitization Hub of the Humanities, Social and Cognitive Sciences) International Conference 2021 on October 26, 2021. Click here for tha program and register: https://www.kyoto-u-digitization.org/home 

Kyoko Amano and Hiroaki Natsukawa will give a presentation titled “Visualization of Relationship among Ancient Indian Literature” at the 49th Visualization Symposium Japan, which will be held online on September 9, 10 and 11, 2021.

Click here for more information: https://www.vsj.jp/symp2021/index.html 

Click here for the abstract of the paper: Abstract

Kyoko Amano will give a presentation titled “Is Indra a Sungot? The Multi-Layers of Thought Currents in Black Yajurveda Saṁhitās” at the 72nd Conference of the Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies, which will be held online on September 4 and 5, 2021.

Click here for more information: http://www.jaibs.jp/en/conference 

Oliver Hellwig is leading “ChronBMM — Bayesian Mixture Models für die Datierung von Textkorpora” in Digital Humanities Project by Federal Ministry of Education and Research. We share the same interest and are collaborating on buildung the database of Vedic texts. About “ChronBMM” Project: https://www.geistes-und-sozialwissenschaften-bmbf.de/de/Digital-Humanities-1710.html

A report on the workshop “Dynamism of Social Context Deciphered by a Linguistic Analysis of Ancient Literature” (Yuzuki Tsukagoshi, the University of Tokyo) has been published in Digital Humanities Monthly No. 115 [Part 2] (February 28, 2021).
http://www.dhii.jp/DHM/dhm115-2 

The laboratory website of Hiroaki Natsukawa, Lecturer at the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University, is now open. https://natsukawa-lab.jp/ 

Two papers by Kyoko Amano dealing with the language layers and formation process of Vedic literature (Maitrāyaṇī Saṁhitā) have been published.

“What is ‘knowledge’ justifying a ritual action? Uses of yá evám véda / yá evám vidvan in the Maitrāyaṇī Samhitā.” In: Aux sources des liturgies indo-iraniennes, ed. by Redard, C. / Ferrer-Losilla, J. / Moein, H. / Swennen, P., Collection Religions, Comparatisme – Histoire – Anthropologie 10, 39-68. 2019. Liège: Presses Universitaeire de Liège. (PDF 2.6MB) 

“The Development of the Uses of ha / ha vái / ha sma vái with or without the Narrative Perfect and Language Layers in the Old Yajurveda-Samhitā Texts.” Lingua Posnaniensis 61, ed. by Chandotti, M. P. / Pontillo. 2019. T. Sciendo: Warszawa. 11-24. (PDF 716KB) 

On February 12, 2021, the first workshop of this project, ” Dynamism of Social Context Deciphered by a Linguistic Analysis of Ancient Literature,” was held online. 117 participants from 10 countries registered for the workshop. A collection of slides is here (PDF 13.2MB). 

The first workshop of this project, ‘Dynamism of Societal Context Deciphered by a Linguistic Analysis of Ancient Literature’ will be hosted online. Please register using Google Form here: 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNx3IFvRFzyAVnDG_FS0T2YesKgbC7T24XmNv47W_Sa_Qm9g/viewform 
Download Flyer (PDF 1.6MB) 

The ancient Indian literature research of Kyoko Amano and this project were featured in a web article by hotozero: ‘A new approach to deciphering ancient Indian literature brought about by a truly deep reading of the texts.’
http://hotozero.com/knowledge/research_pr001/ 

An interview with Kyoko Amano about this project has been uploaded to the website ‘Life as a Scholar: Kyoto University and Beyond’ of Kyoto University Research Administration Office.
https://ecr.research.kyoto-u.ac.jp/cat-b/b1/1052/