Initiatives

Prakaś brings together researchers, system architects and system developers, information architects and instructional designers under a research consulting methodology and academic oversight.  Prakaś has a particular focus on digital infrastructure and methodologies for:

• philological research,
• corpus development
• digital publishing, and
• digital repatriation.

Prakaś current portfolio is based around the development of a philological research framework for ancient manuscripts and texts: a comprehensive end-to-end solution for collaborative research, sustainable corpus development, and flexible digital publishing.  The platforms include:

• READ Workbench – a SaaS portal which supports the integration and management of researchers, resources, tools and processes in the collaborative development of textual corpora.  Developed by Prakaś Foundation. 
• READ – an open source environment for epigraphic and manuscript research which supports the transcription, research, understanding, analysis and publishing of scholarly editions and studies.  Developed in consortium by LMU-Munich, Prakaś Foundation, University of Lausanne, University of Sydney and University of Washington-Seattle.
• Gandhāran Buddhist Texts  – The site is a venue for researchers and developers engaged in the study of Gāndhārī Buddhist manuscripts and inscriptions, some of the oldest extant Buddhist documents, with the aim of developing digital scholarly editions.
• ANUBhasha – A collective of scholars of premodern South Asia, working at the Australian National University (ANU). This group works to promote the usage of digital tools to engage scholarly and cultural communities in the study and use of manuscripts and literatures.
• Pali Texts  – The Pali Text site is a venue for researchers engaged in the study of Pali Buddhist manuscripts, inscriptions, and texts. As an initial but important step, it is the vehicle for our Kuthodaw Pagoda project that makes available for the first time high-quality images and transcriptions of the Kuthodaw Pagoda recension of the Pali canon.
• gandhara.net