Impact of ragas on humans among proposals selected for govt funding

The other proposals include devising an automated system to answer questions on the Ramayana, looking at the connection between the neeti shastras and modernity, and devising a prototype of sustainable settlements based on the prescriptions of vastu shastra, an Indian framework for architecture.

Does Indian classical music have an impact on human cognitive function, asks a research project among 15 proposals that will all be funded by the education ministry’s Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) programme. Each winning proposal will receive ₹10 lakh over two years.

The outcome of these research projects will be published in peer-reviewed journals. (Representative use)

The other proposals include devising an automated system to answer questions on the Ramayana, looking at the connection between the neeti shastras (scriptures dealing with issues of principle and law) and modernity, and devising a prototype of sustainable settlements based on the prescriptions of vastu shastra, an Indian framework for architecture.

The outcome of these research projects will be published in peer-reviewed journals, said Ganti S Murthy, national coordinator for IKS. “The project will help to create the highest quality peer-reviewed literature in Indian knowledge systems,” he said.

The IKS division was established by the ministry as an innovation cell at the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in 2020 to promote interdisciplinary research on aspects of indigenous knowledge. The division invited proposals in July 2021 to provide grants to promote research in the field.

As many as 156 proposals were received from institutions across the country, officials said. Of them, 45 were shortlisted and sent to three different expert committees for further consideration. Finally, 15 proposals, covering a wide range of areas including science, engineering and technology, linguistics, Ayurveda, yoga, management, and Indian traditional knowledge base have been approved.

The main objective of the programme is to promote research in the field of IKS at various levels by providing opportunities to scholars, said Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman of AICTE. “We were overwhelmed with the number of applications and after a meticulous scrutiny process, 15 were selected,” he said.

Of the 15 approved projects, 11 were from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), including those in Kanpur, Mumbai, Banaras Hindu University, Dharwad and Roorkee. Besides, two were from the University of Hyderabad, and one each from the Central University of South Bihar, and School of Natural Resource Management in Meghalaya.

“We have also concluded the second round of submission of research proposals on Thursday and received around 260 applications,” Murthy said. “We are those reviewing the applications now.”

The topics of some of the other approved projects are: analysis of sound spectrum of mantras; traditional principles of settlement planning in heritage temple sites of Odisha; Development of conversational Sanskrit translator using neural machine translation; exploring mineral acids in rasayana shastra texts; and revitalizing indigenous knowledge of sustainable farming practices in northeast India.

Explaining the idea behind his proposal to develop an automated question-answer system for Ramayana, Arnab Bhattacharya, a professor at IIT Kanpur, said: “There are so many versions of Ramayana available in many languages.Therefore, there is always confusion about some facts. The basis of this system will be Valmiki Ramayana. It will be like a search engine wherein anyone can type any question about Ramayana and will get an automated factually correct answer. For instance, not many people know that there is no mention of the popular Lakshman rekha in the original Valmiki Ramayana. It was made up by some version somewhere. So the system will be able to tell which version of Ramayana introduced this story.”

An assistant professor at IIT BHU’s department of human studies, Sukhada, explained her project proposal on finding answers of modern day problems from the ancient texts of neeti shastras. “The idea is to find values mentioned in the shastras and understand how they are still relevant in the modern world. For instance, the ongoing controversy over hijab," she said. “We can go back and check what our ancient literature and scriptures say about it. It may not be that the ancient literature must be particularly talking about hijab. But it might give some insight,, which will be used to seek some relevant answers.”