Search box
The main input box is your first option. You can search for a single sequence (of three or more characters) or multiple ones. The results will include entities that contain the requested sequence anywhere in their name or content. In this our search is unlike that of popular web search engines such as Google, which search only for whole words. The idea is that you can search for a sequence without having to type long words (or long compound words). The flip side is that the search may yield many more irrelevant results.
Here are some examples of sequence searching:
- Search results for the sequence ava will include "Ānandavardhana."
- Search results for the sequence king will include "Kṛṣṇadevarāya" because the word "king" is part of the description of this entity.
- Search results for ava king will include both entities. In other words, you get results for ava OR king. Note that an entity that contains words with both sequences should appear higher in the result list.
- Search results for "ava king" will include only entities that contain this exact sequence.
Some notes:
- A sequence may or may not include diacritics and accents; the search engine ignores them. Search results will include both entities with nonaccented occurrences of the sequence and entities with accented occurrences.
- Searches are case insensitive; that is, the search engine ignores capitalization.
Years boxes
If you add years, you will not get items in which the year field was left empty.
Search within a specific content type
If you are looking for an item or items of a specific content type (e.g., works, people), we urge you to use the search page that is specific to this content type. You can reach each of them directly from the main menu ("Works," "People," and so on).
After getting results, you may see a display of some filtering options on the left. These options are specific to this content type. Note that only the options that are available in at least one entity from the search results are given to be chosen. Therefore, if you feel that an option is “missing," it is because none of the entities in the search results holds that option.
Results
Results are sorted by relevance. That is, the most relevant result is displayed first. Some parts of the content of an entity might be given a higher weight or rank and therefore boosted. For example, if a sequence is contained in the title of one entity and in a description of another entity, the former will be displayed first because we give the title a higher rank.