Aesthetics of Sanskrit Poetry from the Perspective of Computational Linguistics: A Case Study Analysis on Siksastaka
This work addresses a niche problem for computational linguists and Sanskrit scholars by offering a novel approach to analyze poetry, though it is incremental in applying existing computational methods to a new domain.
The authors tackled the lack of computational analysis of Sanskrit poetry by proposing an interpretable framework to classify its qualities, applying it to the Siksastaka poem with annotations for features like meter and mood, and providing a web application for interactive exploration.
Sanskrit poetry has played a significant role in shaping the literary and cultural landscape of the Indian subcontinent for centuries. However, not much attention has been devoted to uncovering the hidden beauty of Sanskrit poetry in computational linguistics. This article explores the intersection of Sanskrit poetry and computational linguistics by proposing a roadmap of an interpretable framework to analyze and classify the qualities and characteristics of fine Sanskrit poetry. We discuss the rich tradition of Sanskrit poetry and the significance of computational linguistics in automatically identifying the characteristics of fine poetry. The proposed framework involves a human-in-the-loop approach that combines deterministic aspects delegated to machines and deep semantics left to human experts. We provide a deep analysis of Siksastaka, a Sanskrit poem, from the perspective of 6 prominent kavyashastra schools, to illustrate the proposed framework. Additionally, we provide compound, dependency, anvaya (prose order linearised form), meter, rasa (mood), alankar (figure of speech), and riti (writing style) annotations for Siksastaka and a web application to illustrate the poem's analysis and annotations. Our key contributions include the proposed framework, the analysis of Siksastaka, the annotations and the web application for future research. Link for interactive analysis: https://sanskritshala.github.io/shikshastakam/