A curated encyclopaedia of Krishna consciousness, built directly on top of the original books. Every article embeds Srila Prabhupada's own words — not summaries, not paraphrases, but the actual verses, translations, and purports.
"The simplest online database that could work."
The original books are the source. But with 21,000 pages across 67 volumes, finding what Prabhupada said about a specific topic — the nature of the soul, the story of Prahlada, the meaning of surrender — requires either deep familiarity or hours of searching.
VaniWiki solves this by building a curated layer on top of the originals. Each wiki article is a doorway into the books — not replacing them, but making them accessible. When you read about Prahlada Maharaja, you see Prabhupada's actual purports embedded directly in the article, with the key passages highlighted.
Nothing is fabricated. Nothing is paraphrased. The wiki article is a guide that shows you where to look and what to notice in the original text. The books do the teaching. The wiki does the navigation.
Built in Obsidian — a knowledge management tool that understands connections between documents. Every feature maps directly to a capability:
A wiki article about "the nature of the soul" doesn't describe what Prabhupada taught — it shows it. The Obsidian embed syntax ![[bg/2/13]] pulls in the full verse — Devanagari, transliteration, synonyms, translation, and purport — directly into the article.
When embedding a long purport, the article highlights the key passage so the reader knows exactly what to focus on. Four methods: pipe syntax, data attributes, inline code, and paragraph numbers. The highlighted text glows within the embedded content.
Every reference is a link. [[bg/4/7|Bg. 4.7]] links to the verse. Articles link to each other. The system automatically tracks backlinks — visit any verse and see every wiki article that references it. The knowledge graph emerges naturally from the links.
980 index entries extracted from the original book indexes of Bhagavad-gita, Srimad-Bhagavatam, and Caitanya-caritamrta. Alphabetical browsing (A-Z), deep-dive entry pages for major topics, and 78 meta categories covering philosophy, personalities, practices, places, and more.
Every article is tagged by topic. Tags create automatic category pages — browse all articles about devotional service, all personalities from Srimad-Bhagavatam, all analogies Prabhupada used. The taxonomy grows organically as articles are added. Meta categories in the index provide a curated top-down view.
Prahlada, Dhruva, Arjuna, Kunti, the Gosvamis — who they are, their stories, with embedded purports from the relevant cantos.
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The soul, karma, reincarnation, devotional service, the spiritual world — each with the definitive verses and purports.
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Namamrita (the holy name), Siksamrita (instructions from letters), Varnasrama-dharma — deep-dive collections with highlighted embeds.
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Prabhupada's vivid analogies: the gold earring, the green bird, the lotus in mud — each with the source passage embedded.
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Janmastami, Gaura Purnima, Ratha Yatra — the significance as taught by Prabhupada, with linked readings.
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First-person accounts from disciples who served Prabhupada directly. PrabhupadaConnect collection.
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VaniWiki is not a separate project from the books archive — it's what the books become when you add a navigation layer. The original texts are untouched and sacred. The wiki adds pathways through them: "If you want to understand X, start here, then read this purport, then see what Prabhupada said about it in this lecture."
Everything is connected. A verse in Bhagavad-gita links to the wiki article about the topic. The article embeds related verses from Srimad-Bhagavatam. The index entry points to all of them. The backlinks show every article that references a given verse. The tags group them by theme.
The result is the simplest possible online database that could work — plain text files with links between them. No complex software, no proprietary format, no database server. Just markdown files that reference each other. Anyone can read them, search them, extend them, and build on them.
Browse articles, compilations, and index entries at prabhupada.io