A modern recreation of the beloved VedaBase reading software — the program that brought Prabhupada's books to thousands of devotees. The best of what it was, plus everything it was missing.
The original VedaBase was built on Folio Views — a proprietary document management system from the 1990s. For its time, it was remarkable: full-text search across all of Prabhupada's books, lectures, and letters. Devotees around the world relied on it daily for study, class preparation, and research.
But Folio was a product of its era. It runs only on Windows. It uses a proprietary encoding — no Unicode support, which means Sanskrit diacritical marks are rendered through a custom font (Balarama) rather than standard characters. There's no proper scripture index built into the interface. The software hasn't been updated in years. It can't run on Mac, Linux, tablets, or phones.
Despite these limitations, devotees still use it — because nothing else has matched its core experience: everything in one place, instantly searchable, always available offline. That's what we're recreating.
Built with Tauri (Rust backend) and Solid.js (reactive UI). Runs natively on macOS, Windows, and Linux. One codebase, all platforms. The database holds 21,000+ pages indexed for instant search.
Ultra-lightweight web reader. 295 chapters compiled from source markdown. Three themes, font choices, section toggles, reading progress. Zero framework, runs in any browser. For when you don't want to install an app.
Read two texts side by side. Compare BG verse with SB commentary. Open a wiki article alongside the source.
Multiple reading contexts open simultaneously. Each tab remembers its page, scroll position, and history. Drag to reorder.
Audio plays while you read. Chapter-based playlists auto-advance. Speed control, position memory. Background playback.
Search across all 21,000 pages instantly. Results show context, highlight matches. Filter by book, content type, date.
980 curated index entries with cross-references. Browse alphabetically or by category. What Folio never had.
Light, dark, sepia. Multiple fonts. Adjustable size and line height. Section toggles for Devanagari, transliteration, synonyms.
Visit any verse and see every article, compilation, and lecture that references it. The knowledge graph the books always needed.
Works without internet. All data stored locally. Entire codebase on GitHub. Anyone can inspect, contribute, or fork.
We're developing this application in partnership with AI tools — Claude for architecture and coding, AI-assisted testing, automated quality assurance. This means a small volunteer team can build software that would normally require a company. The Tauri + Rust + Solid.js stack compiles to native applications for macOS, Windows, and Linux from a single codebase.
AI accelerates the development, but every decision is made by devotees. The reading experience, the design choices, the content presentation — these reflect years of actually using VedaBase and knowing what devotees need for daily study, class preparation, and personal reading.
With funding support, we can dedicate more time to polish, testing, and the features that matter most. The goal: the best possible reading experience for Srila Prabhupada's books, free for everyone, forever.
Your contribution helps us build the reading experience Prabhupada's books deserve — cross-platform, beautiful, and free for every devotee on the planet.