Bhakti Library
His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda Founder-Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness The preeminent translator of this literature into English

Bhakti Library A study and teaching companion for the books of Śrīla Prabhupāda

Every book complete with purports, entirely offline. Every citation is a link, every verse shows where else it is quoted, and a Sanskrit concordance tells you what a word means everywhere it appears.

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  • Works offline
  • iPhone & Android
The word page for dehin, opened by tapping dehinaḥ in the verse Bhagavad-gītā 2.13 with Devanāgarī, transliteration, word-for-word, translation and purport
Bhagavad-gītā 2.13, and the page behind its first word.

The whole library, complete with purports

  • Bhagavad-gītā As It Is
  • Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
  • Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta
  • Śrī Īśopaniṣad
  • The Nectar of Instruction
  • The Nectar of Devotion
  • Śrī Brahma-saṁhitā

In the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust's current editions — and every word of it works with no internet connection at all.

Looking a verse up is a moment. Study is a practice.

The books themselves are already free to read on the web, and a search engine will find you a verse in seconds. Bhakti Library is for what comes after: reading the purport with its citations one tap away, seeing where else the books quote the verse you're on, following a Sanskrit word through every verse it appears in, gathering what you find into the outline you'll speak from, and getting the verse by heart.

It is a tool for the practice — for the devotee who studies every day, the one who wants to follow the Sanskrit, and the one preparing to give class — and it works where the network doesn't.

Inside the app

Made for study

  1. 01Cross-references

    Every citation is a link — both ways

    Tap a verse cited inside a purport and it opens in place; Back walks the trail you followed.

    vedabase.io links about 4,000 citations across these books. Bhakti Library links about 11,600 — nearly three times as many — because it also finds the Sanskrit a purport quotes, set off or inside a line of prose, and the citations written out as plain text, and links each one to its source.

    And the links run backwards: about 1,500 verses list every place in the library that cites them, saying of each whether it quotes the verse or only refers to it.

    The foot of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.9.33: QUOTED IN 13 PLACES, each place saying whether it quotes this verse or cites it

  2. 02The concordance

    Tap a Sanskrit word, see it everywhere

    Every word in the word-for-word is a door. Tap one and its page opens — for most words, the dictionary word behind it, with the form you tapped picked out at the top: its grammar, and how the word-for-word usually renders it.

    Below that, every place the word appears across the library — in the order of the books, or gathered by how it is rendered — with every shape it takes and the compounds built on it.

    The dictionary word dehin, reached by tapping dehinaḥ in Bhagavad-gītā 2.13: its root, the form tapped and its possible cases, the dictionary line, and every occurrence by book

  3. 03From the English

    Or start from the English

    The index runs backwards too. Start from an English word in the word-for-word — “mind” — and see the Sanskrit behind it: manas, but also ātman, citta and cetas, commonest first.

    It is an index of the books' own English rather than a translation of ours, so a reader with no Sanskrit has somewhere to begin.

    The English word mind: the Sanskrit words rendered with it in the word-for-word, manas first, then ātman, citta and cetas, each with a count

  4. 05Reading journeys

    Read a book straight through

    A reading journey keeps your place through a whole volume — the Gītā, or one canto or līlā — and moves along on its own as you read, a verse or a chapter at a time. The library shows how far you have come.

    Look something up on the way and it stays where you were. Reading a scripture from beginning to end is called pārāyaṇa.

    The library: every book, then READING with a journey through the Bhagavad-gītā at 126 of 700 texts, then YOUR MARKS

  5. 06Memorization

    Get the verse by heart

    Memorization uncovers a verse a line at a time — tap for the next line, swipe to peek at how it begins — and keeps the translation covered until you ask for it.

    Memorizing Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.9.33: the first two lines revealed, the rest and the translation still covered

  6. 07Collections

    Gather what you find

    A collection is a named, ordered set of verses with your own note on each — the outline you speak from when you give class. A verse can sit in several, and say something different in each.

    Ready-made ones come with the app: the Bhakti-śāstrī and Bhakti-vaibhava memorization verses set by the ISKCON Ministry of Education, the catuḥ-ślokī, the Śikṣāṣṭaka, and the Gītā and Bhāgavatam verses Śrīla Prabhupāda quoted most.

    The ready-made collection of the catuḥ-ślokī verses, each verse with its own note

  • Entirely offline

    The whole library ships inside the app — no account, no ads, nothing waiting on a server. It is this fast on a train, in a temple basement or on a plane.

  • Bookmarks, highlights and notes

    One tap bookmarks a verse; select any passage to highlight it, down to the phrase. A note can sit on the bookmark, on the highlight, or on a verse inside one collection.

  • Read it your way

    Show or hide the Devanāgarī, transliteration, word-for-word, translation and purport, each on its own. Pinch anywhere to change the text size, in light or dark.

  • Never lost

    The compass jumps to any chapter or verse from wherever you are, a trail of crumbs leads back up the book, and a swipe turns a chapter at a time.

concordance.bhaktilibrary.org

The concordance is on the web, too

The same index, in any browser: every dictionary form, every place it appears, and the English index that runs the whole thing backwards. It is free, there is nothing to install, and each reference opens the verse on vedabase.io, which carries the books with the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust's permission.

The web edition leaves out the Caitanya-caritāmṛta and The Nectar of Devotion for now; its About page says why. The app has the whole library.

Open the concordance
The online concordance's page for bhakti: 337 occurrences, the root √bhaj, the dictionary line, and every occurrence with its grammar

Follow one word up, and back

  1. The form in the verse bhaktyā instrumental singular of bhakti (f.)
  2. Its dictionary form bhakti bhaktiḥ · bhaktyā · bhaktim · bhaktau …
  3. Its root √bhaj bhakta · bhakti · bhajana · bhāga …
  4. Or from the English “mind” manas · ātman · citta · cetas …

Follow that chain a few times and you are learning Sanskrit rather than looking things up. The whole vocabulary is browsable too — an index of about 17,000 dictionary headwords in the app, in the order of the Sanskrit alphabet.

The text, unaltered

His words, as the BBT prints them

Everything in the app is Śrīla Prabhupāda's text as the BBT publishes it — reproduced faithfully and unaltered from the current editions, with the BBT's copyright notice at the foot of every screen that shows a line of it. The study apparatus lives around the text, never inside it: nothing is added to a purport, and nothing is written in his name.

The text itself comes from vedabase.io, which has kept his books online, free to every reader, for well over a decade. This app is built on that work.

His translations and purports run through the whole of the Gītā, the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, the Īśopaniṣad, The Nectar of Instruction and The Nectar of Devotion, and the Bhāgavatam as far as the thirteenth chapter of the Tenth Canto, where his work stood at his disappearance in 1977. His disciples completed the remaining cantos in the same form, and they appear here as the BBT prints them. Śrī Brahma-saṁhitā is the one other voice in the library: the English edition of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, its 1932 translator and commentator, as the BBT publishes it.

Who's making this

Bhakti Library is an independent project by Christopher Norris. It is free, with no advertising and nothing for sale, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust — a distribution licence is being sought from the BBT International. Corrections, and anything that reads or renders wrongly, are welcome at info@bhaktilibrary.org.

With thanks

To Jamunā Jīvanī devī dāsī, Kalakaṇṭha dāsa, Brahmatīrtha dāsa, Hṛdayānanda dāsa Goswami, and Ellie, and to every beta tester, especially Bṛhat Mṛdaṅga dāsa and Sahadeva dāsa.

Beta now open

On iPhone and Android. Free, no account, no ads. Testers get the app as it is built, and bookmarks, highlights and notes carry across every update.

Join the beta