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Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours

ithihasas.in

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Re: Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours

#11

Post by PradeetPatel »

What an incredibly diverse and inclusive UI design. I often find that Indian mythologies tend to be overshadowed, but with the advent of AI generated art and media there's been a resurgence of Indian-centric stories.

Keep up the good work!

Re: Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours

#12

Post by naravara »

PradeetPatel wrote: post #11

What an incredibly diverse and inclusive UI design. I often find that Indian mythologies tend to be overshadowed, but with the advent of AI generated art and media there's been a resurgence of Indian-centric stories. Keep up the good work!

The internet being flooded with AI slop masquerading as devotional artwork has been among the most depressing things about GenAI. It has no meaning or intention or devotion behind it, it’s just engagement farming. Nothing of value is added by having Devi with extra fingers on each hand and completely blurred messes for all the affects in her hands. Or pictures of Rama shooting a bansuri out of his bow. It’s just tripe. We could have told the stories with an overlay of open source artwork from Raja Ravi Varma or Gita Press or old Tanjore paintings or Chola bronzes or whatever if we couldn’t afford to hire an artist who knows what items Vishnu is supposed to be holding in each hand.

It’s not a problem just for us Hindus either. I see so much terrible Jesus/angel “artwork” everywhere. It makes me start to wonder if maybe the Wahabbis were onto something with their complete taboo around depictions of God or the prophets.

Re: Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours

#13

Post by danish00111 »

Feels like you created an Obsidian of the entire Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa... I love the Crimson Dusk theme. I think, for the relationship graph, when the clusters get too overloaded in some places, they should separate out even when I zoom in. When I zoom in, they're still too close to each other which makes it hard to read the bottom right section of Mahabharata.

Re: Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours

#16

Post by wordspotting »

cvrajeesh wrote: post #3
ashtavakra wrote: post #2

Good attempt. What were the sources for these graphs? Orginals? Valmiki Ramayanam and Vyasa Mahabharata? Looking at Mahabharata's relationship graph on the website - it feels like it is incomplete. There are probably ~400 to 500 active named characters in Mahabharata (among several thousands of named characters overall)

That’s a fair point, and you’re right. Right now the data isn’t directly modeled from primary sources like the Valmiki Ramayana or the Mahabharata. It’s an MVP built quickly using curated summaries, so the graph is definitely incomplete. Planning to expand coverage and move towards a more accurate, source-grounded knowledge graph over time.

Can you do comparative textual analysis between original sources and popular retellings? Or highlight it better across different versions.

E.g. Laxman Rekha incident is not present in Valmiki Ramayana but is present in societal consciousness.

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