fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools

FoJin 佛津

Ask the Buddhist canon — get cited, verifiable answers.

AI Q&A grounded in the world's largest open aggregation of Buddhist texts: 600+ sources, 30+ languages, trilingual cross-canon retrieval — every answer linked back to its source passage.

Ask a question in plain language and FoJin's assistant "XiaoJin" answers from the canon itself — Retrieval-Augmented Generation over 670K+ embedded passages, optional cross-encoder reranking and root-sutra recall, clickable 【《sutra》juan N】 citations that open the exact source text, anti-hallucination guards, and a citation drawer with side-by-side 汉 / 巴利 / 藏文 cross-canon parallels. You can also ask in the voice of 15 historical Buddhist masters, each scoped to their own tradition's scriptures.

What makes those answers trustworthy is the corpus underneath. FoJin aggregates 612 data sources into one searchable platform — 10,500+ texts with 19,000+ volumes of full content in Classical Chinese, Pali, Tibetan and Sanskrit, the first LLM-driven trilingual cross-canon parallel reading platform (CBETA × SuttaCentral × 84000) with LLM-verified chunk-level alignment, a 110K+ entity knowledge graph on a Deck.GL geo map, and 39 dictionaries with 747K entries. Every feature exists to make the answers more grounded — and to let you go deeper once you have one.

FoJin is built to be open, cross-canon, verifiable Buddhist knowledge infrastructure — not just a site to read, but a corpus other tools can *call*. Every passage carries a stable, resolvable cross-canon URN (fojin:cbeta/T0001.1), and the [`fojin-mcp`](https://pypi.org/project/fojin-mcp/) server lets AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, any MCP client) answer from FoJin's cited passages directly — hosted at `mcp.fojin.ai`, anonymous, no key required. Any model can also check its own work through the open [`/api/verify/quote`](https://fojin.app/agents) endpoint: hand it a sentence and a citation, and it answers *is this quote real* and *is the citation right* as two separate questions. See [fojin.app/agents](https://fojin.app/agents).

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Why FoJin?

Buddhist texts are scattered across hundreds of databases worldwide — CBETA, SuttaCentral, BDRC, SAT, 84000, GRETIL, and many more. Each has its own interface, language, and data format. When you have a *question* — "what does the Heart Sutra mean by 'form is emptiness'?", "how do the Pali and Chinese versions of this passage differ?" — you spend more time hunting for the right passage than understanding it.

FoJin answers the question for you. Ask in plain language; XiaoJin retrieves the relevant passages from 612 sources and answers with clickable citations you can verify. Everything else FoJin does — full-text reading, cross-canon alignment, the knowledge graph, 39 dictionaries — exists to make those answers more grounded, and to let you go deeper once you have one:

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/xr843/fojin.git

cd fojin cp .env.example .env # edit POSTGRES_PASSWORD before starting docker compose up -d # database migrations run automatically

Then visit: http://localhost:3000

API docs at http://localhost:8000/docs

After first startup, the platform has the database schema and source metadata but no text content. To import texts from public data sources:

# Import CBETA catalog (auto-scans local xml-p5 directory or fetches from remote)

docker exec fojin-backend python scripts/import_catalog.py

Import CBETA full text content (requires xml-p5 repository)

docker exec fojin-backend python scripts/import_content.py --all --xml-dir /data/xml-p5

Generate embeddings for AI Q&A (supports incremental processing)

docker exec fojin-backend python -m scripts.archive.misc.generate_embeddings --source cbeta

Import SuttaCentral Early Buddhist Texts

docker exec fojin-backend python scripts/archive/imports/import_suttacentral.py

See all available importers (one-off importers live under archive/)

ls backend/scripts/archive/imports/

Each importer downloads data directly from the original source (CBETA, SuttaCentral, etc.) — no data is bundled in this repository.

Use FoJin from your AI tools (MCP)

FoJin's verified, cross-canon corpus is callable directly from AI assistants (Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, or any MCP client) via the published [`fojin-mcp`](https://pypi.org/project/fojin-mcp/) server — so the assistant answers Buddhist questions from FoJin's cited passages instead of hallucinating.

Point any MCP client at the hosted endpoint — nothing to install, no key to get:

claude mcp add --transport http fojin https://mcp.fojin.ai/mcp

Or run it locally over stdio against your own instance:

uvx fojin-mcp                 # zero-install run

or: pip install fojin-mcp && fojin-mcp

It exposes eight read-only tools over the public API, each returning passages with a stable, resolvable cross-canon URN (fojin:cbeta/T0001.1):

Claude Desktop config and ChatGPT setup are in [`mcp-server/README.md`](mcp-server/README.md). The server is a thin, read-only client: it holds no credentials, bundles no corpus, and only calls FoJin's public endpoints — its default target is https://fojin.app/api, overridable via FOJIN_API_BASE_URL to point at a self-hosted instance.

Features

Multi-Dimensional Search

Search across Buddhist canons by title, translator, catalog number, or full-text keyword. Powered by Elasticsearch with ICU tokenizer for multi-language support.

Full-Text Reading

Read 8,900+ Buddhist texts with 19,000+ volumes of full content online. CBETA-style typography with intelligent verse/prose detection, paragraph reflow, and adjustable font size. Navigate by volume, scroll through content, and jump between related texts.

Parallel Reading (30 Languages)

Compare translations side by side — Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, English, Japanese, Korean, Gandhari, and 21 more languages.

Dictionary Lookup

32 authoritative dictionaries with 748,000+ entries across Chinese, Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and English:

Chinese Buddhist Dictionaries (14)

• NTI Reader (佛学辞典) — 161K entries, Chinese↔English
• Suihan Lu (新集藏經音義隨函錄) — 72K entries, Tang dynasty phonetic glossary
• Fo Guang (佛光大辭典) — 32K entries
• Ding Fubao (丁福保佛学大辞典) — 31K entries
• Yiqiejing Yinyi (一切經音義, 慧琳音義) — 23K entries, Buddhist scriptural phonetics
• Faxiang Dictionary (法相辭典, 朱芾煌) — 15K entries, Yogācāra terminology
• Zhonghua Encyclopedia (中華佛教百科全書) — 6K entries
• Common Buddhist Terms (佛學常見詞彙, 陳義孝) — 6K entries
• Agama Dictionary (阿含辭典, 莊春江) — 5K entries
• Fanfanyu (翻梵語) — 4K entries, Sanskrit-Chinese translation glossary
• Xu Yinyi (續一切經音義, 希麟) — 2K entries
• Yogācāra Glossary (唯識名詞白話新解) — 2K entries
• Sanzang Fashu (三藏法數) — 1K entries
• Buddhist Origins of Idioms (俗語佛源) — 567 entries

**Pali Dictionaries