The Necessity and Importance of Building a WordNet for the Prakrit Language

[Manish Modi]

_*The Necessity and Importance of Building a WordNet for the Prakrit Language*_

~ By Professor Dr Suresh Jain 

The development of a dedicated WordNet for Prakrit represents a critical scholarly and digital undertaking for the preservation and study of India's ancient linguistic heritage. Prakrit, an ancient Indian language and the immediate ancestor of Apabhramsha, the intermediary between ancient Indian languages like Sanskrit and Prakrit, and modern Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Odiya, Punjabi, Marvari, etc., underpins extensive canonical literature, notably in Jainism and Buddhism. Establishing this structured lexical resource is crucial for its inherent linguistic value and its potential for advanced computational research.

1. Preservation of Ancient Linguistic Heritage

Prakrit is a foundational language of the Indo-Aryan family and the common ancestor to many contemporary Indian languages (e.g., Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi). A digital WordNet is essential for:

- Lexical Preservation: Cataloguing the ancient lexicon and semantic relationships before they are permanently lost.

- Textual Accessibility: Ensuring that core Jain, Buddhist, and classical texts written in Prakrit remain accessible, intelligible, and verifiable for future scholars and linguists.

2. Scholarly and Digital Research Support

The WordNet establishes a structured digital repository of words, definitions, and semantic relations, providing robust support for linguistic research:

- Comparative Linguistics: It aids scholars in comparative research on translation, etymology, and historical language change across the Indo-Aryan family.

- Etymological Linkage: The structure naturally connects Prakrit terms to their Sanskrit roots and their subsequent evolution into modern derivatives, such as Hindi and Gujarati.

3. Clarification of Semantic and Lexical Organisation

The core function of the WordNet—grouping words into synsets (sets of synonyms) and establishing relations like antonymy, hypernymy (broader terms), and hyponymy (narrower terms)—is vital:

- Philosophical Nuance: For Prakrit, this structure is key to clarifying the subtle, context-dependent semantic nuances prevalent in Jain and Buddhist philosophy.

- Example: Linking "धम्मो (Dhammo)" to its corresponding Sanskrit, Apabhramsha, and modern equivalents clarifies its meaning network across religious and temporal contexts.

4. Computational Linguistics and NLP Foundation

A Prakrit WordNet provides the essential lexical backbone required for modern Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications in ancient Indian languages:

- Machine Translation: It serves as a foundational resource for developing accurate machine translation models (Prakrit ↔ Sanskrit ↔ Modern Languages).

- Text Annotation and Search: It enables advanced text digitisation, annotation of religious scriptures, and the creation of semantic search tools.

- AI-Based Understanding: It is crucial for developing AI models capable of deep, contextual understanding of historical texts.

5. Bridging Ancient and Modern Languages

Prakrit acts as the critical linguistic bridge between classical Sanskrit and the modern vernaculars. The WordNet enables the systematic tracing of semantic evolution:

- Tracing Evolution: It allows computational models to accurately track how meanings and morphological forms evolved across centuries—for instance, tracing the term _pāṇo_ (प्राणो) through _prāṇī_ (Sanskrit) to its modern forms.

6. Support for Jain and Buddhist Textual Studies

Given that most Jain canonical texts are composed in Ardhamāgadhī and Shaurasenī Prakrit, the WordNet is indispensable for theological studies:

- Accurate Interpretation: It assists scholars in interpreting complex philosophical vocabulary with validated, contextual meanings.

- Educational Enhancement: It enhances the accuracy of AI-assisted scripture interpretation and the development of educational resources.

7. Integration with Indian Language WordNet (ILWN)

Integrating Prakrit into the existing framework of the Indian Language WordNet (developed at IIT Bombay) would provide immense synergistic benefits:

- Layered Structure: Adding Prakrit as a base or parent layer would significantly strengthen the ILWN by providing clear historical and etymological connections, thereby enriching the cross-lingual semantic resource landscape.

Thus, the initiative to build a WordNet for Prakrit is not merely an academic luxury, but a scholarly necessity and a progressive digital step toward safeguarding India's profound linguistic and cultural continuity.

_About the author:_

Dr Suresh Jain is Professor, Computer Science and Engineering at the IPS Academy, Indore. He is a researcher in the area of Natural Language Processing in Hindi and Sanskrit, and Machine Learning. 

His contact details are as under:

Professor Dr Suresh Jain

Indore

Telephone

98930 23635

Email

drsure...@ipsacademy.org

🙏🏻🇮🇳

[Anunad Singh]

Professor Dr Suresh Jain has nicely explained the importance of Prakrit in a nutshell. Everybody will agree with him. Contrary to its importance, it is also true that Prakrit has been neglected to a great extent and its importance has not been fully appreciated in last 100 years or so.

Prakrit has a vast volume of literature including व्याकरण and शब्दकोश।  Fortunately, compiling or developing lexical databases has become more and more easy than ever due to natural language processing tools. The wordnets available in other Indian languages will also be helpful in creation of the Prakrit wordnet.

It will also not be out of context to say that Pali wordnet also does not seem to exist.

-- अनुनादः 

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[Manish Modi]

Dear Anunad ji,
Namonamah! 

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. 

M

[Anunad Singh]

It would be nice to hear from Professor Dr Suresh Jain what workflow he has thought of for building the Prakrit WordNet and what tools he has thought of using? What databases and text has he in his mind to use?

-- अनुनादः