The conference was inspired by an article that appeared in the Spring 1987 issue of AI Magazine -- "Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence." A working group has been created to pursue the goals of the conference and to possibly arrange another conference for 1987 and 1988.

This conference is analogous to the ancient texts but little procedural consultation of philosophers and cognitive information), we had to rely on the This report is a review of the First psychologists by computer scientists pandits to whom the oral tradition had National Conference on Knowledge in the beginnings of AI. been passed. Representation and Inference in Western psychology and philosophy is The conference was inspired by Sri Sanskrit, Bangalore, India, 20 through quite different from the Indo-Aryan Paramananda Bharathi Swamiji and 22 December, 1986 The conference tradition: the former has its basis in was organized by Dr. H. N. Mahabala was inspired by an article that Aristotelian logic and the scientific (president, Computer Society of India; appeared in the Spring 1985 issue of method, whereas the latter is also chairman, Indian Institute of AI Magazine--"Knowledge based on introspection and internal Technology) and others. The conference Representation in Sanskrit and experience Nevertheless, both these was attended by the vice-chairman Artificial Intelligence." Virtually text.The purpose of AI in this context every institute of science, mathematics is to derive a "method" for natural language and engineering was represented. A working group has been created to was implicit; it was not the focus.

In the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural language to make them accessible to computer processing, These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old.

In the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural language to make them accessible to computer processing, These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor. But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one. There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1000 years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own. Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old. First, a typical Knowledge Representation Scheme (using Semantic Nets) will be laid out, followed by an outline of the method used by the ancient Indian grammarians to analyze sentences unambiguously. Finally, the clear parallelism between the two will be demonstrated, and the theoretical implications of this equivalence will be given.