Second vision paper on the Encyclopedia Project

Auroville, 22. February 2018

In the past Savitri Bhavan published a concept paper on the vision of a Savitri Online Encyclopedia, an online platform providing not only a digital version of the text, but also online references and links to all kinds information and interpretation available online and offline, referring to the different levels of the poem like the book as a whole, the books, cantos, sections, sentences, lines and words.

This project is meant to provide a powerful platform for the future to gather, organize and publish the work of several researchers, collecting the various levels of information by Sri Aurobindo and Mother themselves as well as by all the students and scholars on Savitri in the past, making them accessible directly liked to the relevant parts of the book. In this way the Savitri Online Encyclopedia could become a tool providing readers and researchers of different levels of knowledge a help in reading and understanding Sri Aurobindo’s amazing work.

To bring this project one step closer towards reality, Sebastian, one year volunteer at Savitri Bhavan since mid-January 2018, started to put up a draft for an appropriate online framework which is meant to provide the described features. The webpage is based on WordPress CMS and Avada Theme and published under the URL:

https://encyclopedia.savitribhavan.org/

The vision of the page is to provide information about background of the book, the original Mahabarata story, a summary of the book in general and the different cantos, information on the main lines of interpretation found in the literature as well as links and references to all kinds of online and offline resources. The core of the project will be a digital version of the 1993 Revised Edition of Savitri with the possibility to add pop-up comments on the level of cantos, sections, sentences, lines and words. On the level of words an easy-to-read pop-up definition of all more advanced English words will be integrated. A news section and maybe a newsletter are considered, to keep readers informed about recent developments and share interesting insights on Savitri. A first draft of the ongoing work is already online, not yet providing a ready-to-use system, but giving a good first impression on the vision of the webpage and its facilities.

When finished, Savitri researchers from all over the world are invited to contribute to the Encyclopedia. New materials will be selected, edited and put online by one or a few central editors taking care of the project. Our wish is to establish a cooperative collaboration between researchers and editors to make the process effective and satisfying for both sides.

Anybody who is interested to support and join the ongoing work or wants to give feedback or suggestions is very welcome to contact us by the contact form.