[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit Wikisource

Fri Aug 7 01:00:16 UTC 2026

Hi everyone,

I extended and clarified the alternate Sanskrit Wikisource interface I
mentioned last month. Please note the new name and URL:

https://tylergneill.github.io/sanskrit-wikisource-atlas/

I also wrote about it on my blog:

https://tylerneill.info/blog/sanskrit-wikisource-and-atlas

Headline finding: This collection definitively surpassed GRETIL's size
between 2015 and 2020 and now appears to be 2–4x as large (see trend graphs
<https://tylergneill.github.io/sanskrit-wikisource-atlas/about.html#data-quantity>).
We should probably be paying more attention to it for our research.
Hopefully the improved interface helps you do just that.

Kind regards,
Tyler

On Wed, Jul 1, 2026 at 5:19 PM Tyler Neill <tyler.g.neill at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Harry, hi all,
>
> Re: Sanskrit Wikisource, it’s a great question. Here’s what I know.
>
> Wikisource, part of Wikimedia, is a complex, crowdsourced project with
> public revision history. Like the other parts, the Sanskrit part of Wikisource
> has no individual creator. And while it does have a lot of potentially
> useful material, it is absolutely abysmal in both its metadata (e.g.,
> bibliography, contributors) and its navigation features (Devanagari-only,
> wiki-style traversal of an underlying category tree, no flat list
> anywhere), making it very hard to get a sense of what’s there. Wikisource
> was simply not built to host e-text collections, but a number of motivated
> people have used it to work on and share material they might not have
> otherwise, which is something to be thankful for.
>
> To start to come to grips with the collection, I made the following
> alternate interface a few months ago. It makes both categorical navigation
> and title-search more user-friendly, including in multiple
> transliteration options.
>
> https://tylergneill.github.io/sanskrit-wikisource-mirror/
>
> For this purpose, I scraped the full content for safekeeping in case of
> emergencies, and to estimate scope — NOT to re-host, as the collection is
> still living and growing. That is, this mirror merely points to the
> originals. The interface shares the conservative scope information, totaling about
> 260mb of plain-text content in about 4,700 individual web pages. For
> comparison, GRETIL is roughly 350mb before controlling for duplication,
> about 175mb after. (see
> https://tylerneill.info/blog/gretil-past-and-present). In short, it is
> indeed huge and very interesting.
>
> Looking closer, tho, I’ve found that there’s quite a bit of duplication,
> with digitizations of varying quality left in differing stages of
> completion, and barely a hint to help make sense of it all. Some material
> is based on an OCR pipeline internal to Wikisource (using off-the-shelf
> Tesseract, I believe), most was manually keyed.
>
> My overall assessment: On a one-off basis, items should be studied,
> understood, and improved, most likely involving careful transplantation
> onto other platforms where they can be better cared for and become part of
> mainstream academic use. (https://sanskritsahitya.org/naishadhiyacaritam derives
> from Sanskrit Wikisource, for example). My strong opinion is that it would
> be unwise to duplicate and ingest the material en masse for
> presentation elsewhere in its current condition, as doing so would only add
> to the confusion.
>
> Kind regards,
> Tyler
>
>>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Harry Spier <vasishtha.spier at gmail.com>
>> To: Asko Parpola <aparpola at gmail.com>
>> Cc: indology at list.indology.info
>> Bcc:
>> Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:45:38 -0400
>> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] śiva-purāṇa from Veṅkaṭeśvara Press
>> Dear list members,
>>
>> Thank you to Asko  Parpola for the bibliographic information.
>> And thank you to Samyak Modi, who offlist provided me the archive.org
>> link, which I'm providing here since it was asked for by other members
>> offlist. This seems to be the same edition though printed in different
>> years.
>>
>> https://archive.org/details/XaaT_shri-shiva-maha-puran-visweswar-samhita-1955-shri-venkateswar-press-mumbai/page/n13/mode/2up
>>
>> I have just added a complete  Śiva-Purāṇa   (all 7 books)  to SALSa  (the
>> Searchable Aggregate Library of Sanskrit). and this appears to be the
>> edition. Previously the collection only had a version with books 1 and 7.
>>
>> Charles Li pointed me to "Sanskrit Wikisource"
>>
>> https://sa.wikisource.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%96%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%83%E0%A4%B7%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A0%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8D
>>
>> and I downloaded the complete Śiva-Purāṇa etext (in devanagari) from
>> there.
>>
>> Does anyone know anything about that wikisource page Charles Li pointed
>> me to:  संस्कृतविकिस्रोतसि स्वागतम् which has this and many other
>> sanskrit etexts.  Who created it etc.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Harry Spier
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 12:11 PM Asko Parpola <aparpola at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Harry, [Śiva-Purāṇa.] Pothi form. Bombay: Venkaṭeśvara
>>> Press,1906. 7, 488 fol. Reprinted, with an introduction by Pushpendra
>>> Kumar (xvi pp.) and a śloka index by Nagasarana Sinha (244 p.), Delhi:
>>> Nag Publishers, 1986. 2 vols. 1504 pp. Set INR 900.
>>> Best wishes, Asko
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 29, 2026 at 5:41 AM Harry Spier via INDOLOGY
>>> <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Received from a list member.
>>> > Harry Spier
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Sun, Jun 28, 2026 at 9:18 PM Harry Spier <vasishtha.spier at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Dear list members,
>>> >>
>>> >> If anyone has a pdf of the śiva-purāṇa from Veṅkaṭeśvara Press (or if
>>> it is in archive.org, could point me to it) I would appreciate it.
>>> >>
>>> >> Thanks,
>>> >> Harry Spier
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > INDOLOGY mailing list
>>> > INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>>> > https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Asko Parpola, aparpola at gmail.com
>>> http://www.helsinki.academia.edu/AskoParpola
>>>
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