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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

#21

Post by TheLNL »

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.

I wonder how using wikidata as a source would work. I haven't checked but I assume these characters would be realtively comprehensively covered.

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

#22

Post by amritananda »

naravara wrote: post #12
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 trip…

>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

South Asian religions are in an especially bad position because so many works related to them have never been digitized (and quite frankly, in some cases what's available on the internet is of extremely low quality) [1]. I'd be pretty concerned if someone were to rely on entirely on these models since the probability of hallucinations (or at the very least, erasure of regional/ideological diversity) probably skyrockets because the information was never actually there in the training data to begin with.

[1] I was able to find a few works of Newari Buddhist iconography recently, so it might be changing: https://web.archive.org/web/20240901130203/https://download..... It still has a few mistakes and doesn't compare to what's out there, though.

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

#24

Post by ethan_smith »

stinger wrote: post #9

I like the attempt but mythology is significantly more layered that just the study of their characters at the end. A single perspective of these stories will help you get the lay of the land but you need to be very cautious if you want to use this to draw lessons and conclusions from them. For example, the protagonist and antagonist are different from the perspective of the other characters. Both these epics are all…

Good point. One way to handle this might be to show the same event from multiple character perspectives - like how Karna's story looks completely different depending on whether you enter it from Kunti's node vs Duryodhana's. The graph structure actually lends itself well to this since you could attach different narrative framings to each edge.

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

#25

Post by jauntywundrkind »

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)

And where did the stats come from? I find it very amusing & interesting & informative. I'm assuming you had the LLM generate these? That would be so interesting to see the prompts for!!

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

#27

Post by ultrasounder »

Absolutely slick UI and wonderful implementation. As an ardent follower of Santana Dharma I admire OP’s courage and grit to put this piece of work out there. More power to OP and hoping to see more Epics included. Thanks for making and sharing this.

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

#28

Post by SilverElfin »

amritananda wrote: post #22
naravara wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trip…

>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 South Asian religions are in an especially bad position because so many works related to them have never been digitized (and quite frankly, in some cases what's available on the internet is of extremely low quality) [1]. I'd be pretty concerned if someone were to rely on entirely on…

If they’re never digitized then where do you get the originals?
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