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

Hi HN!

I’ve always found it hard to explore the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa online. Most content is either long-form or scattered, and understanding a character like Karna or Bhishma usually means opening multiple tabs.

I built https://www.ithihasas.in/ to solve that. It is a simple character explorer that lets you navigate the epics through people and their relationships instead of reading everything linearly.

This was also an experiment with Claude CLI. I was able to put together the first version in a couple of hours. It helped a lot with generating structured content and speeding up development, but UX and data consistency still needed manual work.

Would love feedback on the UX and whether this way of exploring mythology works for you.

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

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.

Good vis. I wasn't sure what to expect, tbh. A few notes:

- The default vis has very low contrast (despite changing theme colors).. perhaps make the contrast stronger. I find this is the case with most AI-driven websites :-/ Same for some of the standard text ("family lineage", "group connections, etc)

- Pls cite the sources. That would be useful / important

- The dynasty tree looks useful... But is it incomplete? Or is only the visualization capped at some limit?

- Wasn't sure what the "Sections" dropdown on the left does

The challenge for sure is about the sheer number of characters, the number of years/decades in these epics, the complexity.

Would love to see some references, perhaps with quotes in Sankskrit / transliterated to English, at key points. [yes, this is challenging, no doubt]

Hope this is useful

Is it just my setup or is the contrast so bad that I cannot read anything.

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 about the nuance and that needs to be captured effectively to do justice to them