Skip to main content

CDSL 2026 Year in Review (January–June)

The first half of 2026 brought the most visible changes to the CDSL project in years: a comprehensive new documentation site, preface texts for sixteen dictionaries, a new API layer, a new shared transcoding library, and sustained daily correction work — all alongside a programme of security hardening across every server-side codebase.

New documentation and guides site​

The project now has a comprehensive documentation site at sanskrit-lexicon.github.io/csl-guides. It covers five areas: using the search interface and reading tools; deep-dive pages for all 43 dictionaries (with sample entries, abbreviation tables, and headword keying conventions); the multi-dictionary comparison tool; a contributor correction workflow; and a developer guide. A step-by-step guide to reading Monier-Williams — with 69 quiz questions linked to live CDSL entries — and a cross-dictionary abbreviation comparison are also included.

Prefaces digitised for sixteen dictionaries​

Sixteen dictionary repositories now have a prefaces/ folder with the scanned preface text, along with English and Russian translations where the original is in German or French: Böhtlingk–Roth (PW, 36 pages), Macdonell (MD), Böhtlingk kürzere Fassung (PWK), Cappeller (CCS), Stchoupak (STC), Benfey (BEN), Schmidt (SCH), Shabda-Sagara (SHS), Vācaspatyam (VCP), Wilson (WIL), Monier-Williams 1872 (MW72), Indian Epigraphical Glossary (INM), Vedic Index (VEI), Indische Sprüche (BOP), Grassmann (GRA), and Macdonell Practical Dictionary (MD).

New dictionary: NMMB integrated​

The Nāmamālā dictionary (NMMB) was integrated into the online search infrastructure in June 2026: the XML generation pipeline, the web display, the offline app, and the headword normalisation layers were all updated. This is the first dictionary addition since the 2023 Hemachandra additions.

Security hardening across all server-side endpoints​

A Semgrep SAST scan was run across every PHP and Python codebase in the organisation. All reflected-XSS vulnerabilities in JSONP callback parameters were patched, database queries were converted to prepared statements, and Dependabot was configured on every active repository.

Salt API Phase 1 and csl-standards v1.0.0​

A new api1/ layer launched in csl-apidev offering structured endpoints for Monier-Williams lookups (entries, ids, and a prototype graphql endpoint). The csl-standards repository reached v1.0.0 as the validation workbench for TEI/OntoLex export formats, and included a Benfey English sense extractor and GRA coordinate citation linking.

sanskrit-util: shared transcoding library launched​

The new sanskrit-util repository provides canonical IAST/SLP1/Devanāgarī transcoding and normalisation as a dual Python + JavaScript library with a cross-language test suite and a browser global build (window.SanskritUtil).

To receive future editions by email, subscribe here.