Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours
Hi HN! I’ve always found it hard to explore the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa online. Most content is either long-form or scattered, and understanding a character like Karna or Bhishma usually means opening multiple tabs. I built https://www.ithihasas.in/ to solve that. It is a simple character explorer that lets you navigate the epics through people and their relationships instead of reading everything linearly. This was also an experiment with Claude CLI. I was able to put together the first version in a couple of hours. It helped a lot with generating structured content and speeding up development, but UX and data consistency still needed manual work. Would love feedback on the UX and whether this way of exploring mythology works for you.
Discussion Highlights (19 comments)
ashtavakra
Good attempt. What were the sources for these graphs? Orginals? Valmiki Ramayanam and Vyasa Mahabharata? Looking at Mahabharata's relationship graph on the website - it feels like it is incomplete. There are probably ~400 to 500 active named characters in Mahabharata (among several thousands of named characters overall)
FrancisGerard
Very cool! I like how cool it is to see the graph, but at the current density it’s a bit hard to read. I’ve been working on a similar project for biblical texts. For example, here’s a character detail page for David: https://hypr.bible/en/entities/person/david/ I’m finding that character dictionaries like this are useful to people who want to engage with ancient texts but are not very familiar with them, but even if one is familiar, they are still quite helpful.
aanet
Good vis. I wasn't sure what to expect, tbh. A few notes: - The default vis has very low contrast (despite changing theme colors).. perhaps make the contrast stronger. I find this is the case with most AI-driven websites :-/ Same for some of the standard text ("family lineage", "group connections, etc) - Pls cite the sources. That would be useful / important - The dynasty tree looks useful... But is it incomplete? Or is only the visualization capped at some limit? - Wasn't sure what the "Sections" dropdown on the left does The challenge for sure is about the sheer number of characters, the number of years/decades in these epics, the complexity. Would love to see some references, perhaps with quotes in Sankskrit / transliterated to English, at key points. [yes, this is challenging, no doubt] Hope this is useful
ksdme9
Is it just my setup or is the contrast so bad that I cannot read anything.
avrionov
Looks great. Which libraries / themes did you use?
stinger
I like the attempt but mythology is significantly more layered that just the study of their characters at the end. A single perspective of these stories will help you get the lay of the land but you need to be very cautious if you want to use this to draw lessons and conclusions from them. For example, the protagonist and antagonist are different from the perspective of the other characters. Both these epics are all about the nuance and that needs to be captured effectively to do justice to them
phyzix5761
Very nice. Is the UI inspired by Org Roam UI?
PradeetPatel
What an incredibly diverse and inclusive UI design. I often find that Indian mythologies tend to be overshadowed, but with the advent of AI generated art and media there's been a resurgence of Indian-centric stories. Keep up the good work!
danish00111
Feels like you created an Obsidian of the entire Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa... I love the Crimson Dusk theme. I think, for the relationship graph, when the clusters get too overloaded in some places, they should separate out even when I zoom in. When I zoom in, they're still too close to each other which makes it hard to read the bottom right section of Mahabharata.
dhruvmittal
Really cool stuff, but I really don't understand the dynasties viz. For example, Kunti somehow has her sons to the left of, right of, and above her, making the relationship unclear.
random_walker
Nice, good one!!
atulvi
This is cool, but also add the relationship between two entities on the edge as an edge label. Probably only when one node is highlighted.
lateforwork
Very nice. The relationship graph flickers too much when I move the mouse over it. Consider adding an animated fade.
alephnerd
Would love this to be extended well beyond common Western known classics and other similarly complex ones like Ananda Math, Baburnama, etc. This with Amar Chitra Katha would be great.
ultrasounder
Absolutely slick UI and wonderful implementation. As an ardent follower of Santana Dharma I admire OP’s courage and grit to put this piece of work out there. More power to OP and hoping to see more Epics included. Thanks for making and sharing this.
swaminarayan
this is not mythology. this is ithihasas meaning thus it happened
the_arun
Do you use any DB? like Neo4J? or static jsons generated at build time?
r0b05
Just want to say that the UI is very pleasant.
sparin9
This is a genuinely delightful project. The graph-based approach to navigating the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa feels really natural — these epics are fundamentally about relationships and webs of consequence, so exploring them through a character graph rather than linear text makes a lot of sense. The Crimson Dusk theme is a nice touch too. Looking forward to seeing how the data coverage grows over time!