Vedic Ontology

by David Bruce Hughes

We are very pleased to present Transontology.org, the world's first ontology of Vedic wisdom. We pioneered pure research into the semantic and ontological structure of the Sanskrit Vedic literature.

The ultimate purpose, value and utility of this research will be demonstrated once ontological query and reasoning software engines supporting non-Aristotelian logic appear. We manage an open-source software project to build such a configurable logical query engine. Until then, we will continue to enhance and develop ontologies in the Vedic namespace to serve as a foundation for the next generation of advanced consciousness research.

This website conforms to several international technical standards, notably the W3C RDFS standard. Soon we hope to upgrade it to OWL to express the more subtle aspects of Vaisnava philosophy in a formal ontology. For more background on Semantic Web technology, please see http://www.w3c.org/2001/sw/.

Your help and support make this pioneering project possible. Thank you very much for your inspiration and encouragment! Please contribute funds and/or volunteer your technical skills to support this important project.

Graphical Ontological Analysis

The figure at right shows a graphical analysis of the Bhakti[Gaudiya] ontology with the Welkin graphical RDF Browser. The cluster of nodes at the upper right represents the Abstract classes of the ontology (classes that cannot have real-world instances). The spread-out nodes at bottom are Concrete classes, such as Rasa, Bhava, Permanent Sentiment and Transitory Emotions, that can have experiential instances. The next step is to add actual instances from the Sanskrit Vedic scriptures. Then the ontology will support logical queries.

Software Engineers

We are looking for software engineers and tech writing/editorial interns for an exciting software development project on the cutting edge of computer language understanding and AI. You will help plan, implement and manage a state-of-the-art open-source international development program with potential for profound impact in the sciences and humanities.

Experience and knowledge of Windows, Linux, Java, Lisp, Python, CYC-L, OpenCYC, structured predicate ontologies, non-Aristotelian logic and APIs desirable. You will receive broad exposure to advanced research concepts, and associate with brilliant scientists and stimulating research colleagues. Insight and imagination required.