harishaaram / alexa-skill

Implementation of Tirukkural using Alexa skill

Alexa skill application:

• Published in Amazon developer Community - check it out

Outcome of the Application:

A personal assistant that randomly chooses a kural/ couplet based on the chapter of our interest

Thirukkural:

The Tirukkural or Thirukkural (Tamil: திருக்குறள், literally Sacred Verses), or shortly the Kural, is a classic Tamil sangam literature consisting of 1330 couplets or kurals, dealing with the everyday virtues of an individual.Considered one of the greatest works ever written on ethics and morality, chiefly secular ethics, it is known for its universality and non-denominational nature. It was authored by Valluvar, also known in full as Thiruvalluvar.

Structure of the book

The Tirukkural is structured into 133 chapters, each containing 10 couplets (or kurals), for a total of 1,330 couplets.The 133 chapters are grouped into three sections, or "books":

- Book I: Aṟam (Tamil: அறத்துப்பால், Aṟattuppāl ?) (Dharma) dealing with virtue (Chapters 1-38)
- Book II: Poruḷ (Tamil: பொருட்பால், Poruṭpāl ?) (Artha) dealing with wealth or polity (Chapters 39-108)
- Book III: Inbam (Tamil: காமத்துப்பால், Kāmattuppāl ?) (Kama) dealing with love (Chapters 109-133)

Each kural or couplet contains exactly seven words, known as cirs, with four cirs on the first line and three on the second. A cir is a single or a combination of more than one Tamil word. For example, Thirukkural is a cir formed by combining the two words thiru and kuṛaḷ. The book on virtue (aram) contains 380 verses, that of wealth (porul) has 700 and that of love (inbam) has 250.

The overall organisation of the Kural text is based on seven ideals prescribed for a commoner besides observations of love.[11]

- 40 couplets on God, rain, ascetics, and virtue
- 200 couplets on domestic virtue
- 140 couplets on higher yet most fundamental virtue based on grace, benevolence and compassion
- 250 couplets on royalty
- 100 couplets on ministers of state
- 220 couplets on essential requirements of administration
- 130 couplets on morality, both positive and negative
- 250 couplets on human love and passion

Requirements:

• AWS account
• AWS developer account

Technologies used:

• Lambda
• Alexa skill set
• S3
• CloudWatch
• echosim.io

references:

• [https://github.com/alexa/alexa-cookbook/blob/master/labs/LocalRecommendations/src/index.js]
• [https://github.com/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs]
• [https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference#audio]
• [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirukku%E1%B9%9Ba%E1%B8%B7]
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atYubLO92u0]
• [https://github.com/alexa/skill-sample-nodejs-fact/blob/master/step-by-step/6-publication.md]