Project Madurai

Why an edition has to be pinned

A grammar claim that cites "Tholkappiyam" and stops there cannot be checked. Editions differ, numbering differs, and a reader who wants to disagree with us needs to know exactly which text to open.

So both works are stored as version-locked artifacts with a checksum, rebuildable from source by a script that verifies what it produces. If an upstream file ever changed, the build would fail rather than quietly serving a different verse.

And the numbering is a genuine trap. The Tamil Virtual Academy course books quote Nannūl selectively and renumber: their 336, 319 and 136 are 337, 320 and 137 in this edition. All three were wrong in our tables before the full texts were pinned. Nothing was careless about how they got there, which is the point. A number read from an accredited secondary source looks exactly like a number read from the text.

The texts are read while the server runs

For a while these files were opened only by a test, which checked that every verse number we cited actually existed. That is a real guarantee, and it is not the one a reader wants. Asking "on whose authority?" returned a chapter name.

Now the pinned editions are read at answer time, so a claim carries the நூற்பா itself and the app shows it with this credit attached. A citation tells a scholar where to look. The verse shows them.

One consequence is deliberate: there is no way to ask for a Tholkappiyam verse by bare number anywhere in the code. Its numbers restart in every இயல் and collide, so the function requires அதிகாரம் and இயல் too. A bare number is a bug rather than a shortcut, and the interface refuses to accept one. Nannūl runs continuously, so a bare number there is fine.

Verses are also never retyped, in the code or on this site. They are quoted programmatically from the pinned files, because a transcription drifts within minutes of being read and the drift is invisible. That rule caught five verses drifting during a single session.

What we owe them

Project Madurai's terms are simple: distribute freely, keep the header intact. We do, in the code repository and wherever a verse is displayed. It costs nothing and it is the entire price of work that took volunteers years.

If you find an error in a verse as we serve it, it is worth telling both of us. Ours we can fix in a day. Theirs is the copy everyone else is using too.

How a citation is written →