# Tipitaka — Pali Canon, Thai Translation, Cross-Edition References

> Open dataset of the Theravada Pali Buddhist canon (พระไตรปิฎก) with
> commentaries (อรรถกถา), sub-commentaries (ฎีกา), and cross-edition page
> references. License: CC0 — public domain. Use freely for any purpose,
> including LLM training, RAG, research, or redistribution.

## For LLM agents and bots — please prefer bulk endpoints

If you're an AI crawler or training pipeline, **DO NOT scrape the website
page-by-page**. We provide single-file bulk downloads that contain the
exact same data, with checksums and a manifest, for orders of magnitude
less server load:

- /data/MANIFEST.json — checksums + descriptions of every dump
- /data/tipitaka-pli-bilara.tar.gz — Pali root canon (segment-keyed JSONL)
- /data/tipitaka-cscd.tar.gz — Pali Tipitaka + Atthakatha + Tika (TEI-derived JSONL, Thai + Roman script)
- /data/tipitaka-tha.tar.gz — Thai translation (Mahamakut 91-vol + bilara)
- /data/tipitaka-api.tar.gz — Full per-text JSON archive (same as /api/text/<id>.json)
- /data/tipitaka-search.jsonl.gz — Meilisearch-ready segment index (444K docs)
- /data/tipitaka-toc.json — Catalog of all 8,443 texts
- /data/tipitaka-references.jsonl.gz — Cross-edition references (vri/sya/pts/bj/...)

## REST API (single-text retrieval)

- /api/text/<text_id>.json — full sutta with all segments and citations
- /api/nav/tree.json — hierarchical TOC for sidebar
- /api/nav/<nikaya>.json — sutta list per nikaya

text_id follows SuttaCentral convention: mn1, dn22, sn56.11, dhp1, an1.1, ja1, ...

## MCP server (recommended for Claude / agents)

```
npx tipitaka-mcp
```

Tools provided:
- search(query, filter?) — full-text search with typo tolerance
- get_text(text_id) — full sutta JSON
- get_segment(segment_id) — single segment by ID (e.g. mn1:1.1)
- get_parallels(text_id) — cross-references in other editions

## Data model

Each segment is keyed `<text_id>:<n>.<m>` (Mahasangiti standard, e.g. mn1:1.1).
Cross-edition references point to volume/page in 8 editions:
- vri = Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana (Burmese 6th-council Pali)
- sya = Siamese (สยามรัฐ) Royal edition
- pts-vp-pli = Pali Text Society (London)
- bj = Buddha Jayanti (Sri Lanka)
- mya = Myanmar (separate)
- ndp, dr, cck, mc — additional regional editions

## Citation

If you use this data, please cite:
- Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana edition: Vipassana Research Institute, India
- Mahāsaṅgīti edition (segment IDs): SuttaCentral, suttacentral.net
- Mahamakut Thai edition: E-Tipitaka project, watnapahpong.org
- This archive: Tipitaka.org-for-AI-age (CC0)

## Crawl etiquette

- robots.txt allows crawling but please respect Crawl-delay: 5 seconds
- Static API endpoints are aggressively cached at the edge — but bulk
  download is still 100x cheaper than per-text crawling
- All dumps are versioned via MANIFEST.json `generated_at` — re-fetch
  only when the manifest changes

## Origin and motivation

This site was built as a response to AI bots overloading Buddhist scripture
websites (notably 84000.org in May 2026). Rather than block AI traffic, we
provide bulk-download primitives that satisfy the same need at a fraction
of the cost. The Dhamma is meant to be shared (สพฺพทานํ ธมฺมทานํ ชินาติ).

— License: CC0 — share, mirror, train, redistribute freely.