Indoskript

Indoskript 2.0

Indoskript 2.0 is a paleographic database of Brahmi and Kharosthi that aims at covering the full historical development of these two Indic scripts. Indoskript builds on the great paleographic monographs of Bühler and Dani and on numerous more specialized publications, but offers a higher degree of flexibility. While traditional printed works are static, Indoskript can be queried for different criteria such as historical time, place of origin, or phonetic restrictions. We are convinced that the built-in functions for filtering data and aggregating results facilitate paleographic research to a significant degree.
There is a longer story behind Indoskript 2.0. The original Indoskript project, a cooperation between the Universities of Berlin (Harry Falk) and Halle (Walter Slaje), was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in the years 2000-2005. In this relatively short period, we were able to collect more than 185,000 letters, ligatures, numbers, and other graphical signs from over 850 manuscripts, to date and geolocate the manuscriptological evidence, and to comment on peculiarities of single manuscripts or writers. Our scientific team consisted of Katja Hofmann (kh), Jürgen Neuss (jn), and Harry Falk (hf) from Berlin, and Katrin Einicke (ke) from Halle. Andrew Glass (ag) contributed substantially from the British Museum collection to the Kharosthi part of the database. Oliver Hellwig was responsible for the technical realization.
During this period, we developed Indoskript as a desktop tool for PC and Windows XP. As the support for this platform was finally discontinued, we decided to transfer data and information to a more permanent representation. With the financial support of the Stiftung Ernst Waldschmidt, we were able to develop Indoskript 2.0 as a web interface that reproduces the core functionalities of the original Indoskript, but can be accessed from any platform. As the PC version was held in German and the comments on the sources and individual akṣaras have been adopted whole-sale, the comments remain in their original form and will, hopefully, be replaced by English equivalents in due time.
We hope that the new version will find a similarly interested audience as the original one.
Harry Falk, Berlin

Oliver Hellwig, Berlin