a more usable TKDL - Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

[Sandeep Srinivasa]

I have been thinking about this for sometime, but today I saw this - http://www.deccanherald.com/content/490282/india-blocks-colgate-patents-spices.html - and I was again tempted to do something about it.

The TKDL is a classification of "prior art"/existing knowledge from India's ancient medical texts - http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/SourceInfo.asp?GL=Eng

Ayurveda - http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Ayurveda/Ayu_Advancesearch.asp?GL=Eng

Unani - http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Unani/Una_Advancesearch.asp?GL=Eng

Siddha - http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/siddha/Sid_Advancesearch.asp?GL=Eng

Try searching for something like "basil". you get comprehensive formulae for ancient indian recipes, methods of application,etc

do note that to determine these links are useful from the site itself took me an hour !

This is one of the result pages: http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/LangDefault/Formulation/Demo_Docs/BC/Ayurveda/highlight.asp?a=/tkdl/langdefault/formulation/demo_docs/bc/ayurveda/rd-615.asp&b=basil&c=F&stypePrint=AYURVEDA-SIMPLE-SEARCH?str=Global

I wonder if we can access the raw data, ETL it, index it in elasticsearch and give raw access to Elasticsearch for people. I'm pretty sure it would be more useful than what we have right now ! Some of the references include page numbers to ancient indian books. Maybe it is possible to upload these books to Amazon S3 .. I'm pretty sure they are copyright free.