Development of South Asia ancient letter database with functions of computer identification of letters on inscriptions and their production age

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24650124
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Library and information science/Humanistic social informatics
• Research Institution: Ibaraki University
• Principal Investigator: OZAWA Satoru 茨城大学, 理工学研究科, 特任教授 (20125793)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): MINATO Atushi 茨城大学, 理工学研究科, 教授 (00209826) ; ITABA Masanori 茨城大学, 工学部, 講師 (50400601)
• Research Collaborator: BANDARA Dammi スリランカ政府考古学省, 研究員 ; BANDARA Nilanthi スリランカ政府考古学省, 研究員 ; NALIN Warnajith 茨城大学, 外国人研究者 ; DAHANAYAKA D.D.G.L. , JSPS外国人特別研究員 ; QUARMAL Sakar Barbaq バングラディシュULAB大学, 准教授
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 歴史情報 / パターン認識 / データベース / 分散協調システム / 画像処理 / 国際研究者交流 / 国際情報交換 / ネットワーク

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Sri Lankan Brahmi letters is one of the most important ancient letters in South Asia. They are stored in the form of estampages of inscriptions. With the aide of computer image analysis techniques, the "fonts of standard Brahmi letter" have been produced from original photo data of estampages. By comparing the font image and the inscription data, it is possible to read inscriptions in a semi-automatic way by computer and also possible to guess the production age of the inscription. The Sri Lankan Brahmi letter database has been produced that contains original photo data of inscriptions together with their identified sentences written by using our standard Brahmi letter fonts. The database is open to public in the cooperative knowledge sharing servers systems (KISSEL) which are installed in Asia Pacific countries. In addition to the above works, influence of natural environments on inscriptions is studied and author’s idea is presented regarding preservation of ruins.

Free Research Field

計算機応用