Chennai, Sept 16:
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the fusion of Sanskrit and modern technology had opened a remarkable gateway between the wisdom of the past and the possibilities of the future.
Speaking at the launch of the Sanskrit Heritage Model and Platform linked to Artificial Intelligence, organised by Madras Sanskrit College and Articul8 AI, she said Sanskrit was not merely an ancient language but represented a vast intellectual civilisation encompassing centuries of literature, philosophy, science, mathematics, linguistics, spirituality and cultural memory.
She said much of this heritage remained beyond the reach of modern learners because of its complexity, scale and fragmented accessibility. Artificial Intelligence could transform this situation by helping scholars navigate centuries of texts, connect manuscripts and oral traditions, trace historical journeys and identify links across disciplines, she said.
“Human scholars dedicate lifetimes to mastering a fraction of this immense knowledge. AI can become an tireless companion to that scholarship,” Nirmala Sitharaman said. She stressed that AI should not replace scholars, traditions or the human pursuit of knowledge, but should amplify them.
She said platforms such as Articul8 could act as a bridge between ancient knowledge and the digital generation by making Sanskrit knowledge more discoverable, interactive and accessible. Such technology could help preserve endangered intellectual traditions while enabling new generations to explore them and raise new questions, she added.
The Finance Minister said the initiative could eventually enable students anywhere in the world to engage with ancient Sanskrit texts as naturally as they accessed modern knowledge. Manuscripts that were once available only to specialists could potentially reach millions of learners, she said.
“Technology at its best does not erase the past. It gives the past a new voice,” Nirmala Sitharaman said, stressing the need to ensure that the knowledge that shaped civilisations continued to contribute to future generations.
The initiative had received an early impetus from the Finance Minister during an earlier interaction with the Madras Sanskrit College, when she encouraged the institution to explore the possibilities offered by AI for Sanskrit and its vast textual heritage. This subsequently brought the college and Articul8 together.
The Madras Sanskrit College brings more than a century of Sanskrit scholarship to the collaboration, along with access to an extensive scholarly ecosystem comprising over 1.1 lakh texts and several thousand manuscripts. Its scholars have also been involved in testing the system and providing feedback to help validate its responses.
The Sanskrit Heritage Model, developed under the theme “Ancient Knowledge. Living Intelligence”, combines the college’s traditional Sanskrit scholarship with Articul8’s generative AI capabilities. The system brings together multiple AI models, a Sanskrit language engine and a verification layer, all powered by Articul8’s technology platform.
The model has been designed to take into account Sanskrit’s highly structured grammar, including the way meaning is expressed through words, compounds and textual context. General-purpose AI systems can sometimes produce fluent but inaccurate responses when dealing with such linguistic complexities.
The Sanskrit Heritage Model seeks to address this challenge by incorporating Sanskrit’s grammatical structure into the way information is processed, learned and verified. The platform also allows users to explore knowledge and trace responses back to their sources.
Earlier in the day, Nirmala Sitharaman attended the convocation of Dr MGR Educational and Research Institute in Chennai, where she presented medals and certificates to meritorious students and delivered the convocation address.