About us
Preserving the sampradaya's knowledge for the AI era
Ulagaariyan is an AI assistant for the thennacharya sampradaya. It answers questions only from the sampradaya's own texts, commentaries and the discourses of its scholars, and shows where every answer comes from.
Why we are building it
The knowledge of our sampradaya lives in thousands of books, many of them centuries-old commentaries cited by every elder of the tradition, and in decades of recorded discourses. Most of it is hard to reach: out-of-print volumes, scanned pages with no searchable text, and recordings with no transcripts. Young people and newcomers in particular struggle to find it.
Meanwhile, general-purpose chat apps answer questions about the sampradaya confidently, mixing traditions, citing blog posts whose authenticity cannot be checked, and sometimes inventing verses. A devotee asking what Sharanagati means, or which utsavams are held in Srirangam in a given month, deserves an answer grounded in the tradition itself.
What Ulagaariyan does
- Answers only from the sampradaya's sources. Classical texts and commentaries, books by recognised scholars, and recorded discourses. It does not draw on the open web.
- Cites every answer. Each answer links to the passages it is based on, so anyone can read the original.
- Says when it does not know. If the library does not hold the answer, it says so rather than guessing.
- Works in Tamil and English. Ask in either language.
- Is reviewed by scholars. Experts check samples of the text extracted from books and recordings, and the assistant's answers, and their corrections improve it continuously.
Where we are today
Ulagaariyan is in a private pilot with a small group of scholars and evaluators, while we bring the rest of the library online and measure accuracy with expert review. Access will widen in stages. To be told when it opens, register your interest.
The people behind it
Seshadri Pillailokam
Founder
Blessed to be born in the lineage of the scholarly acharyar Pillailokam Jeeyar, Seshadri is a technology veteran with multiple decades of experience across Amazon and Microsoft.
Sri U.Ve. M.A. Madhusudhanan
Chief Mentor
PhD in Sanskrit and a renowned thennacharya scholar from the Mandayam Ananthanpillai lineage, he is the son and disciple of Medhavi Mani Sri U.Ve. M.A. Venkatakrishnan Swamy.
For organisations
The platform behind Ulagaariyan is available to religious organisations, institutions and publishers as VeraScript AI: a source-grounded assistant built on your own library, with expert review built in.
Get in touch
Questions, offers of help, or books and recordings to contribute: contact us or write to contact@ulagaariyan.ai.