A multilingual Digital Humanities archive

India’s stories,
across India’s languages.

SHABD India preserves, translates and opens access to underrepresented literary traditions—bringing every story into conversation with every language.

Corpus 01Building in public
22

languages × 22 stories

22source texts
462translations
484textual versions

One selected story from each scheduled language, progressively translated into the other twenty-one.

অসমীয়াবাংলাबड़ोडोगरीગુજરાતીहिन्दीಕನ್ನಡکٲشُرकोंकणीमैथिलीമലയാളംꯃꯤꯇꯩꯂꯣꯟमराठीनेपालीଓଡ଼ିଆਪੰਜਾਬੀसंस्कृतम्ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤسنڌيதமிழ்తెలుగుاُردُو

01 / The idea

One corpus.
A network of relations.

01Select

One culturally significant short story from each scheduled language.

02Translate

Each source story moves progressively into the other twenty-one languages.

03Contextualise

Every version carries people, provenance, notes, rights and review status.

02 / Languages

Enter through a language.

View all 22

03 / Featured story

हींगवाला

Heengwala

The Asafoetida Seller

A story of an itinerant asafoetida seller and the bonds of trust that persist through an atmosphere of communal tension.

Open the story object

04 / Archive in progress

Incompleteness,
made legible.

These are corpus facts, not marketing counters. Every number grows from the published records.

22scheduled source languages
1 / 22core stories published
2 / 484textual versions available
2published AI narrations

05 / Help build the archive

Contribute with care.

All ways to contribute

06 / Research & updates

An archive that also studies its own conditions.

SHABD India brings literary preservation into dialogue with multilingual computing, archival access, translation, accessibility and postcolonial Digital Humanities.

Explore the research