Sources & Licence
Sanskrit text
The Bhagavad Gita verses are the Devanagari text from the open “gita/gita” JSON dataset on GitHub, which is released under the Unlicense. Only the verse text is used. The verses themselves are ancient and in the public domain.
The Ramayana Sanskrit (all seven kāṇḍas) is from the Ramayana_Book repository on GitHub, which draws on Sanskrit Wikisource and IIT Kanpur (CC BY-SA applies to the Wikisource text). The Mahabharata text (the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute critical edition, with its IAST) come from the open DharmicData repository on GitHub, released under the Open Database License (ODbL); the verses themselves are ancient. Please keep this credit if you reuse the compiled data.
Transliteration
The IAST transliteration is generated from the Devanagari text with the indic-transliteration Python library. Compound words are shown joined, as in the Devanagari.
Translations (attribution required)
The English translations of the Bhagavad Gita are by Swami Sivananda, Swami Gambirananda, Swami Adidevananda, Dr. S. Sankaranarayan and Shri Purohit Swami. Each remains the copyright of its author and publisher and is shown here for non-commercial use only, with attribution, as permitted by the Heritage IITKanpur licence terms. Commercial use requires permission from the individual copyright holders. This site is not affiliated with IIT Kanpur.
The Ramayana English is verse-aligned from the open Valmiki Ramayan Dataset (MIT licence), which credits M. N. Dutt’s English translation (1891–1894), IIT Kanpur’s Valmiki Ramayanam and Gyaandweep. Not every verse has an English line (about 99% do), and because the dataset mixes sources the wording is not by one translator. The Mahabharata currently has Sanskrit and transliteration only.
Ramayana: Hindi, English, word meanings and sarga topics
Hindi: the Ramayana Hindi is the Gita Press (Gorakhpur) translation, taken from the ramcharit.in text as compiled in the open andvraman/valmiki-ramayana repository (about 98% of verses). This is a copyrighted translation shown here, with credit, for non-commercial study only; please obtain permission from the rights holder before any public or commercial use of this site. Where one Hindi paragraph covers several shlokas, it is shown once with the first shloka and marked as covering the range.
English: from the Valmiki Ramayan Dataset (MIT licence), drawing on M. N. Dutt (1891–94), IIT Kanpur and Gyaandweep. One prose translation often covers several shlokas; it is shown once with a note rather than repeated on each verse.
Word-by-word meanings and the sarga topics and summaries come from the same dataset (IIT Kanpur's Valmiki Ramayanam). The short topic shown for each sarga is the first clause of that summary.
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata has Sanskrit and transliteration only. No verse-aligned, openly licensed, human-made English or Hindi translation could be found that matches the critical-edition numbering, and machine-translated text is deliberately not used. The Gita (inside the Mahabharata) is fully translated. Each adhyaya lists who speaks in it, read from the “uvāca” lines in the Sanskrit. If you hold a licensed translation, add it with tools/import_translations.py.
Hinglish
Hinglish (Hindi in Roman letters) is shown only for verses where it was written for this site. It is not machine-generated, and no verse is given a translation that does not exist. More can be added in extras.json.
Images, evidence and the student guide
This site ships with no images. Images you add are stored only in your own browser and are not uploaded anywhere. Each must carry an honest label, a licence, and a source or reference where it claims to be a primary source or archaeological evidence. The site cannot verify the links you give; AI-generated pictures are always marked as imagination, never evidence.
The story summaries, character notes and evidence notes in the student guide are original educational text written for this site. The evidence notes cite: the Baroda critical edition of the Valmiki Ramayana (1960–75); the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute critical edition of the Mahabharata (1919–66); B. B. Lal's Hastinapura excavation report (Ancient India, 1954–55); and published discussion of how far archaeology can be tied to the epics. Citations shown as “no link” were not opened online when this edition was prepared, so please check them in a library.
Word meanings
The word-by-word glosses and English meanings are original sample text written for this demo. They cover 7 verses only and are not a scholarly translation. Translations from other editions were not copied.
Book names and counts
The names of the parvas and kāṇḍas, and their adhyāya, sarga and verse counts, follow the public listing on the Heritage IITKanpur portal (heritage.iitk.ac.in). This site is an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by IIT Kanpur or any other institution.
Verse numbering
This edition of the Gita has 701 verse entries. Chapter 13 counts Arjuna’s opening question as verse 13.1, which the traditional count of 700 does not.