It has been under preparation from 1930 and was published in 1935–1965 under the guidance of Viśvabandhu Śāstrī (1897–1973), with an introduction in Sanskrit and English.
It aims to be "a universal vocabulary register" of "Vedic works, with complete textual reference and critical commentary bearing on phonology, accent, etymo-morphology, grammar, metre, text-criticism, and Ur-Aryan philology".
The work covers 123,000 word-bases and 5,000,000 word forms found in about 400 Vedic and Vedanga texts, including Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads (even very late ones).
Viśvabandhu Śāstrī continued the work of Vishveshvaranand and Nityanand, who had published word indices to the four Vedic Samhitas in 1908–1910, leading the Vishveshvaranand Institute from 1924 until his death in 1973.
Most of the approximately 6000 Sanskrit manuscripts formerly located at the Dayanand College of Lahore were clandestinely brought to Hoshiarpur at the time.