Digital Sanskrit Textual Studies

Sanskrit literature is extraordinarily vast, yet its philological foundations remain incomplete: many works are imperfectly edited or still await critical attention, and there are reportedly tens of millions of manuscripts worldwide. Scholars and students rely on scattered, uneven resources, and despite decades of digital experimentation, comprehensive and sustainable digitization has remained out of reach.

This talk explores digital-humanities infrastructure for a low-resource classical language, making the case for open, incremental improvement while asking how much sense it makes to build slowly and deliberately in an era of AI moonshots. From early personal tools developed during Dr. Neil's doctoral work to today’s multi-layered, AI-augmented platform, Kalpataru Grove offers a model of transparency, interoperability, and steady, pragmatic contribution. For more information, visit kalpataru-grove.info, as well as the blog tylerneill.info/kalpataru-diaries.

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Tyler Neil is an independent Sanskrit scholar and programmer living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He completed a PhD at Leipzig University in 2022, with a focus on Sanskrit philosophy, philology, and digital humanities, and he worked professionally as a software engineer in New York City for three years after that. These days, Tyler is creating digital infrastructure to support Sanskrit textual studies, including web apps, data repositories, and new digitizations of classical Sanskrit works.