Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning
Chronological Analysis of Rigvedic Mandalas using Social Networks
Authors: Shreekanth M Prabhu and Radhakrishnan Gopalapillai
Publishing Date: 23-04-2025
ISBN: 978-81-975670-5-6
Abstract
The Vedas are a collection of ancient sacred Hindu scriptures that are considered integral to Indian civilization and foundation of Hinduism. Establishing the chronology of the Vedas has interested scholars for the last two centuries. The oldest among them is Rig-Veda which has ten Mandalas, each composed separately. In this paper, we look at deciphering plausible pointers to the internal chronology of the Mandalas, by focusing on Gods and Goddesses worshiped in different Mandalas. We apply text analysis to the Mandalas using Clustering Techniques based on Cosine Similarity. Then we represent the association of deities with Mandalas using a grid-based Social Network that is amenable to chronological analysis. Further, we analyze references to rivers to arrive at additional correlations. The approach used can be deployed generically to analyze other kinds of references and mentions and arrive at more substantive inferences.
Keywords
Rig-Veda, Mandalas, Social Network Analysis, Cosine Similarity, Agglomerative Clustering, KMeans Clustering, Grid Networks, Digital Humanities.
Cite as
Shreekanth M Prabhu and Radhakrishnan Gopalapillai, "Chronological Analysis of Rigvedic Mandalas using Social Networks", In: Sandeep Kumar and Kavita Sharma (eds), Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning, SCRS, India, 2025, pp. 97-110. https://doi.org/10.56155/978-81-975670-5-6-8