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A catalog of ancient Indian literary sources ❗

Table of Contents

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/66388/66388-h/66388-h.htm http://www.payer.de/quellenkunde/quellen1102.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indica_(Megasthenes)

I think there is a lot of value in having a close relationship with primary sources: in checking PS for any claim you see, and precisely citing them for any claim you make. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of people just endlessly citing each other: at best, the entire discipline becomes a giant game of telephone; at worst, it becomes circular.

This post is a catalogue of ancient Indian literature (plus relevant foreign literature) with online full texts where available. Let me know if I missed anything important. As usual, I focus on the period prior to the 12th century. This also serves as a canonical referencing protocol for primary sources, indicated in the titles, e.g. /in/phil/canon//gita#abhinavagupta (where / indicates a closed class, // indicates an open class and # indicates commentaries) that I will use throughout my writings.

Something I’d quite like to see is a fully functional and complete portal of digitized Indian manuscripts. See end of post for a list of desiderata for such a portal, if anyone’s interested in working on such a thing.

1. /in Extant Indian literature of note

1.1. /veda Vedic corpus

  • /samhita Saṃhitā texts (1500—900 BC), i.e. the basic, earliest layer of the Vedas: full Skt audio from vedicheritage.gov.in. Each Veda has multiple Śākhās (schools) which follow slightly different Saṃhitās, as listed below. Tree of Śākhās from Stack Exchange; a fuller bibiliography of texts and translations is available from Arundhati Basu (2006), Vedic Texts English Translations Of The Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, And Upanisads (archive.org).
  • /upanisad Upaniṣad texts (800—100 BC)
  • /brahmana Brāhmaṇa texts (c. 800 BC, 20 known):
  • /aranyaka Āraṇyaka texts (c. 700 BC):
    • //kausitaki etc. 7 known; included in the Upaniṣad collection above
  • /sutra/grhya, /sutra/dharma, /sutra/srauta (Kalpa-)sūtra texts: Gr̥hyasūtras (c. 800—500 BC) + Dharmasūtras (600—200 BC) + Śrautasūtras (800—200 BC) + Śulbasūtras (appendices of Śrautasūtras)
    • [//baudhayana etc.]
    • Full texts from wisdomlib.org (Gr̥hya and Dharma; this collection also includes other texts, which in our classification instead come under Dharma-śāstra)
    • Full texts from sacred-texts.com (Gr̥hya — vols I, II; Dharma — vols I, II).
    • Full Skt for Śrauta: Baudhāyana 800—600 BC, Apastamba 800—600 BC, Māṇava c. 500 BC, Kātyāyana c. 300 BC)
    • Full Skt for Śulba: Baudhāyana, Apastamba, Māṇava, Kātyāyana
    • Full texts + Skt for Śulba: from Sen & Bag 1983.

1.2. /pol Classical socio-political literature (i.e. Artha, Nīti, and Dharmaśāstra)

1.3. /phil Philosophy and religion

1.3.1. /vedanga Vedāṅga (linguistics, pre-Hellenic astronomy, theology)

1.3.2. /canon Epistemological canon

  • //nyaya Nyāya Sūtra (compiled 600—180 BC). Full text & Skt from archive.org.
  • //vaisesika Vaiśeṣika Sūtra (compiled 600—180 BC). Full text & Skt from archive.org.
  • //samkhyakarika Sāṁkhya Kārikā (c. 350). Full text & Skt from archive.org.
  • //yoga Yoga Sūtra (180 BC). Full text & Skt from archive.org, wisdomlib.org.
  • //yogayajnavalkya Yoga-Yājñavalkya (c. 100 BC). Full Skt from archive.org.
  • //mimamsa Mīmāṁsā Sūtra (600—180 BC). Full text & Skt from archive.org.
  • //vedanta Brahma (or Vedānta) Sūtras (600—180 BC). Full text & Skt from archive.org.
  • //gita Bhagavad Gītā (320 or 180 BC). Full text & Skt from wisdomlib.org, history/sources/primary.org.
  • //carvaka Cārvāka sūtras (compiled 600—200 BC), surviving fragments from RK Bhattacharya. Library access from JSTOR; Full texts & Skt from academia.edu, researchgate.net.

1.3.3. /post Post-Canonical literature

  • Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa’s Tattvopaplavasiṃha (c. 800). Full text & Skt from archive.org (Jha) [a Cārvāka text]
  • ADD!!!

Philosophical literature of traditions besides the standard Brāhmaṇical one is listed under their respective cultures under “Worldy and religious” as they have their own traditional taxonomies for their literature.

1.4. /math Mathematics and astronomy

Siribhoovalaya

1.5. /med Medicine and chemistry

susruta, caraka, stuff those are based on

navanitakam

bhela samhita

hastyayurveda of palakapya

1.6. /art Arts

1.7. /sec Worldly and religious traditions

1.7.1. /bauddha Buddhist

  • /thera Pāli Canon/Theravāda Tipiṭaka (500—250 BC): /vp3, /sp1.34, /ap7 etc. 15 texts (Vinaya Piṭakka: 3 + Sutta Piṭaka: 5 + Abhidamma Piṭaka: 7). Full texts from suttacentral.net.

1.7.2. /jaina Jain

  • /sveta Jain Śvētāmbara canon (500—100 BC): /a12, /u12, /ch6, /m4, /c2 etc. 36 texts (Aṅga: 12, Upāṅga:12, Cheda: 6, Mūlas: 4, Cūlika: 2). Full Gujaratis from jainaagam.org; English work-in-progress by Manas Madrecha (github); also perhaps useful: Jain eLibrary; English [/a1, /ch2, /m2, /a2] from sacred-texts.com.
  • /diga Jain Digambara canon: //kasayapahuda Kāsāyapahuḍa c. 100 (full Pkt from archive.org), //sakthanda Ṣaṭkhaṅḍāgama c. 200 (Full Pkt from archive.org)
  • /painna Paiṇṇa texts (100—500) //causarana, //mahapaccakkhana, //angavijja, //angaculiya etc. 10 of these are often included in the Śvētāmbara canon bringing its number to 46 while the remaining are regarded as supernumerary; however we will classify them all separately. For details see p. 46 of: Hiralal Rasikdas Kapadia (1941), “A History Of Canonical Literature Of the Jainas”, full text from archive.org.
  • /anuyoga Anuyoga genre (c. 100—1200)
    • /epic Prathamānuyoga (Epic literature): //vasudevahindi Saṅghadāsa’s Vasudevahiṇḍī (473), the Jain Br̥hatkathā; //padmapurana Ravisena’s Padma-Purāṇa (678), the Jain Rāmāyaṇa; //harivamsapurana Jinasena-I’s Harivaṃśa-Purāṇa (783), the Jain Mahābhārata; //mahapurana Jinasena-II’s Mahāpurāṇa (850), the Jain cosmology
    • /sci Karaṇānuyoga (Technical literature): //tiloyapannatti Yativr̥ṣabha’s Tiloya-paṇṇatti (6th cen); //gommatsara Nemicandra’s Gommatsāra (975); //lokavibhaga Sarvanandi’s Lokavibhāga (458)
    • /moral Caraṇānuyoga (Moral literature): //mulacara Vaṭṭakera’s Mūlācāra (2nd cen); //aradhana Śivarāya’s Bhagavatī Ārādhanā (2nd cen); //samayasara; Kundakunda’s Samayasāra (2nd cen); //pancastikayasara; Kundakunda’s Pañcastikayasara (2nd cen); //niyamasara; Kundakunda’s Niyamasara (2nd cen): //sravakacara; Samantabhadra’s Ratnakaranda śrāvakācāra (5th cen)
    • /phil Dravyānuyoga (Philosophical literature): //tattvarthasutra Umāsvāmin’s Tattvārtha-sūtra (2nd cen); //pravacanasara Kundakunda’s Pravacanasāra (2nd cen); //aptamimamsa Samantabhadra’s Āptamīmāṁsā (2nd cen); //pramanasangraha etc. Akalaṅka’s many works (8th cen); //dravyasangraha Nemicandra’s Dravyasaṅgraha (10th cen); //jnanarnava Shubhacandra’s Jñānārṇāva (11th cen)
  • /post Post-canonical literature, e.g. //sanmatitarka //dvadasaranayacakra //yogadrstisamuccaya //yogasastra //karmagrantha etc.

1.7.3. Tamil

1.7.4. Purāṇa

1.7.5. Itihāsa, Mahākāvya

  • Brihatkatha and its variants

1.7.6. Storytelling

Storytelling — Panchatantra, Jataka, Brihatkatha, hitopadesha, plays, Charita, vadana

Plays of Dandin, Kalidasa, Mudrarakshasa, Sudraka, etc. https://sreenivasaraos.com/2017/12/17/concerning-the-dasarupa-of-dhananjaya-part-six/

Ashvagosha

1.7.7. Sectarian Āgamas

1.7.8. Encyclopedic texts

1.7.9. Aphorisms

subhashita, chanakya niti, satakatraya

2. Foreign literature

  • Meenakshi & Sandhya Jain (2021), The India they saw. Vols 1-2: 1323 pages. [compilation of basically all foreign literature relating to India]
  • Herodotus, etc.
  • Zoroastrian texts
  • Chinese texts [perhaps just the encyclopedia?]
  • Translations of Indian texts into various languages

3. Desiderata

Something I’d quite like to see is a fully functional and complete portal of digitized Indian manuscripts. Desiderata for a comprehensive portal of Indian and Indian-relevant literature.

  • The categorization should mimic that in this post; each page should be in HTML form (rather than scanned PDFs) and be searchable, and include the original Sanskrit/etc (in IAST transliteration) as well as a dropdown with every popular translation of the text. The user should be able to pick between “verse view”, “chapter view”, … “Level n view”.
  • A huge part of Indian literature, perhaps the majority of it, is commentaries, which often contain very valuable information about ancient Indian society. Unlike currently available translations which contain only a single commentary, the page for each verse should contain all commentaries of note. Commentaries may be embedded e.g. like blog comments on each verse. Translations (both traditional — e.g. Prakrit & Sanskrit versions of texts, Chinese/Persian translations — and modern) should be embedded in the same way. This way the site can be comprehensive while remaining compact, i.e. without causing sprawl. Lost works should also have pages with a list of pingbacks.
  • There should be a “Canonical bookmarks” feature for portions of texts often treated separately, e.g. the Puruṣa Sūkta in the r̥g Veda, the Devī Māhātmya in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, the Bhagavad Gītā in the Mahābhārata — or for recurring elements in various texts, e.g. “descriptions of Jambudvīpa”, “rules of debate”, “Itihāsa (cosmological story)” — or particular search results.
  • Secondary sources (e.g. important textbooks) should be digitized as well; each mention of a primary source in a secondary source should be linked and should create a linkback on the primary sources. Sources that establish dates and authorship (often different for different verses) should be provided a special position (much like commentaries and translations).
  • Ideally, it should also contain a better-categorized and more usable version of the nmma.nic.in website (a database of archaeological finds) — as well as a catalogue of epigraphy, manuscript finds and current locations (libraries/museums/etc). But this is a much more difficult undertaking (though with some money you could probably get something done using MTurk or something).
  • The most notable literature that still hasn’t been translated: the Śrautasūtras (including the Śulbasūtras), most of the Jain canonical literature. See below.

I think this should currently be possible without too much manual effort, with some PDF scraping and machine translation (there are transformer models that get LaTeX documents from scanned PDFs with math equations, so scanning PDF documents to MarkDown or something should be possible). But I’m occupied with other projects, and have way too large a backlog to be working on this, at least alone. If you’re interested, get in touch.

Some useful general resources regarding the scope and size of Indian literature.

  • Maurice Winternitz (1905-1920), A History Of Indian Literature. Vols I-III: 2134 pages. Full texts from archive.org (vol I, II, III). [an overview of Indian literature; original in German]
  • Ganga Ram Garg (1982), International Encyclopedia of Indian Literature. 356 pages. Full text from archive.org.
  • Jan Gonda (ed.) (1975-84), A History of Indian Literature. 10 volumes.
  • MD Srinivas (2019), The Untapped Wealth Of Manuscripts On Indian Astronomy And Mathematics. 30 pages. Full text from archive.org. [a recent survey of the current state of Indian manuscripts]

Author: NiṣādaHermaphroditarchaṃśa (Mal'ta boy ka parivar)

Created: 2025-07-01 Tue 05:27