Feels like you created an Obsidian of the entire Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa... I love the Crimson Dusk theme. I think, for the relationship graph, when the clusters get too overloaded in some places, they should separate out even when I zoom in. When I zoom in, they're still too close to each other which makes it hard to read the bottom right section of Mahabharata.
I like the attempt but mythology is significantly more layered that just the study of their characters at the end. A single perspective of these stories will help you get the lay of the land but you need to be very cautious if you want to use this to draw lessons and conclusions from them. For example, the protagonist and antagonist are different from the perspective of the other characters. Both these epics are all about the nuance and that needs to be captured effectively to do justice to them
I’m finding that character dictionaries like this are useful to people who want to engage with ancient texts but are not very familiar with them, but even if one is familiar, they are still quite helpful.
Good vis. I wasn't sure what to expect, tbh.
A few notes:
- The default vis has very low contrast (despite changing theme colors).. perhaps make the contrast stronger. I find this is the case with most AI-driven websites :-/ Same for some of the standard text ("family lineage", "group connections, etc)
- Pls cite the sources. That would be useful / important
- The dynasty tree looks useful... But is it incomplete? Or is only the visualization capped at some limit?
- Wasn't sure what the "Sections" dropdown on the left does
The challenge for sure is about the sheer number of characters, the number of years/decades in these epics, the complexity.
Would love to see some references, perhaps with quotes in Sankskrit / transliterated to English, at key points. [yes, this is challenging, no doubt]
Good attempt. What were the sources for these graphs? Orginals? Valmiki Ramayanam and Vyasa Mahabharata? Looking at Mahabharata's relationship graph on the website - it feels like it is incomplete. There are probably ~400 to 500 active named characters in Mahabharata (among several thousands of named characters overall)
Right now the data isn’t directly modeled from primary sources like the Valmiki Ramayana or the Mahabharata. It’s an MVP built quickly using curated summaries, so the graph is definitely incomplete.
Planning to expand coverage and move towards a more accurate, source-grounded knowledge graph over time.
Really cool stuff, but I really don't understand the dynasties viz. For example, Kunti somehow has her sons to the left of, right of, and above her, making the relationship unclear.
What an incredibly diverse and inclusive UI design. I often find that Indian mythologies tend to be overshadowed, but with the advent of AI generated art and media there's been a resurgence of Indian-centric stories.
The internet being flooded with AI slop masquerading as devotional artwork has been among the most depressing things about GenAI. It has no meaning or intention or devotion behind it, it’s just engagement farming. Nothing of value is added by having Devi with extra fingers on each hand and completely blurred messes for all the affects in her hands. Or pictures of Rama shooting a bansuri out of his bow. It’s just tripe. We could have told the stories with an overlay of open source artwork from Raja Ravi Varma or Gita Press or old Tanjore paintings or Chola bronzes or whatever if we couldn’t afford to hire an artist who knows what items Vishnu is supposed to be holding in each hand.
It’s not a problem just for us Hindus either. I see so much terrible Jesus/angel “artwork” everywhere. It makes me start to wonder if maybe the Wahabbis were onto something with their complete taboo around depictions of God or the prophets.
>Nothing of value is added by having Devi with extra fingers on each hand and completely blurred messes for all the affects in her hands
South Asian religions are in an especially bad position because so many works related to them have never been digitized (and quite frankly, in some cases what's available on the internet is of extremely low quality) [1]. I'd be pretty concerned if someone were to rely on entirely on these models since the probability of hallucinations (or at the very least, erasure of regional/ideological diversity) probably skyrockets because the information was never actually there in the training data to begin with.
I’ve been working on a similar project for biblical texts. For example, here’s a character detail page for David: https://hypr.bible/en/entities/person/david/
I’m finding that character dictionaries like this are useful to people who want to engage with ancient texts but are not very familiar with them, but even if one is familiar, they are still quite helpful.
- The default vis has very low contrast (despite changing theme colors).. perhaps make the contrast stronger. I find this is the case with most AI-driven websites :-/ Same for some of the standard text ("family lineage", "group connections, etc)
- Pls cite the sources. That would be useful / important
- The dynasty tree looks useful... But is it incomplete? Or is only the visualization capped at some limit?
- Wasn't sure what the "Sections" dropdown on the left does
The challenge for sure is about the sheer number of characters, the number of years/decades in these epics, the complexity.
Would love to see some references, perhaps with quotes in Sankskrit / transliterated to English, at key points. [yes, this is challenging, no doubt]
Hope this is useful
Right now the data isn’t directly modeled from primary sources like the Valmiki Ramayana or the Mahabharata. It’s an MVP built quickly using curated summaries, so the graph is definitely incomplete.
Planning to expand coverage and move towards a more accurate, source-grounded knowledge graph over time.
E.g. Laxman Rekha incident is not present in Valmiki Ramayana but is present in societal consciousness.
Keep up the good work!
It’s not a problem just for us Hindus either. I see so much terrible Jesus/angel “artwork” everywhere. It makes me start to wonder if maybe the Wahabbis were onto something with their complete taboo around depictions of God or the prophets.
South Asian religions are in an especially bad position because so many works related to them have never been digitized (and quite frankly, in some cases what's available on the internet is of extremely low quality) [1]. I'd be pretty concerned if someone were to rely on entirely on these models since the probability of hallucinations (or at the very least, erasure of regional/ideological diversity) probably skyrockets because the information was never actually there in the training data to begin with.
[1] I was able to find a few works of Newari Buddhist iconography recently, so it might be changing: https://web.archive.org/web/20240901130203/https://download..... It still has a few mistakes and doesn't compare to what's out there, though.