Computational Algorithms Based on the Paninian System to Process Euphonic Conjunctions for Word Searches
This work addresses a specific problem for researchers and users of Sanskrit digital texts by providing a novel search engine that handles sandhi transformations, though it is incremental as it builds on existing grammatical systems.
The authors tackled the problem of searching for words in Sanskrit E-texts, which is complicated by euphonic conjunctions (sandhis) that transform word forms, by developing algorithms based on the Paninian system to process these rules and enable comprehensive word searches, resulting in an efficient solution for this domain.
Searching for words in Sanskrit E-text is a problem that is accompanied by complexities introduced by features of Sanskrit such as euphonic conjunctions or sandhis. A word could occur in an E-text in a transformed form owing to the operation of rules of sandhi. Simple word search would not yield these transformed forms of the word. Further, there is no search engine in the literature that can comprehensively search for words in Sanskrit E-texts taking euphonic conjunctions into account. This work presents an optimal binary representational schema for letters of the Sanskrit alphabet along with algorithms to efficiently process the sandhi rules of Sanskrit grammar. The work further presents an algorithm that uses the sandhi processing algorithm to perform a comprehensive word search on E-text.