Letter to Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names (revised edition, Ānandajoti Bhikkhu)

Before sending

• The revised DPPN is published at https://ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Textual-Studies/DPPN/index.htm, “Revised by Ānandajoti Bhikkhu”, and that page shows anandajoti@gmail.com. The page shows no copyright or licence statement for the revision.
• A SuttaCentral forum post (https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/revised-edition-of-the-dictionary-of-pali-proper-names/39992) describes the earlier digitised original as public domain. We have not confirmed this, or who holds rights in the 1937–38 original; the PTS letter asks too.
• Can be merged with anandajoti.md into one email.
• Fill in the maintainer’s name and reply-to address. Only the maintainer sends this letter; agents never send it.
• After sending, update the status in README.md. Record the reply in docs/sources.md.

Letter

Subject: Your revised Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names in a free scripture-study tool

Dear Venerable Ānandajoti,

I maintain Pali Canon for Claude (https://github.com/DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude), a free, open-source tool that helps AI assistants such as Claude look up and quote the Pāli Canon accurately instead of paraphrasing it from memory. When someone asks about a sutta, the assistant retrieves the actual passage from a named source and gives its citation (for example “MN 10” or “M i 55”), the translator or editor, the licence and a link to the original page. The tool is a library, not a teacher: it gives no rulings on practice and does not rank teachers or traditions.

How we would use your work. Readers often meet a name (a person, a place, a monastery) and want to know who or what it is and where else it appears. We would like to add a “look up a name” feature based on the Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names. Before we use any of it, we want to be sure of its status: our rule is to ship content only when its terms clearly allow it. If that is not clear, we will build the feature without content and simply link to your pages.

These safeguards apply to everything the tool returns, and we would keep them for your work:

• Attribution on every result. Each passage comes back with the source’s name, the translator or editor, the licence or terms, and a link to the original page.
• Non-commercial. The tool is free. There are no fees, paid tiers or advertising, and we do not sell or license anyone’s content. The software itself is MIT-licensed; texts keep their own terms.
• Word for word. We never edit, rewrite or generate scripture or translations. Abbreviated passages are flagged as such, and we never silently swap one translation for another.
• Not a training dataset. We do not build or supply datasets for training AI models. A passage is handed to the assistant only in the conversation where a reader asked for it, so that it can be quoted and cited correctly.
• Light, read-only access. The tool reads only from a short list of approved sites, one page at a time when a reader asks; it does not crawl.
• Your wishes come first. SuttaCentral has asked not to be used in AI tools, so we only link to it. If you would prefer the same, we will switch to links only and record your wishes publicly in our source library (https://github.com/DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude/blob/main/docs/sources.md).

What we are asking.

1. What is the copyright status of your revised edition, and do you know the status of Malalasekera’s 1937–38 original?
2. If permitted, may we include the entries (or short summaries of them, clearly credited), each with a link to your page?
3. If you would prefer links only, is there a stable way to link to an individual entry?
4. How would you like the revision to be credited?

If it would help, I am happy to send more detail, show you the tool working, or change how your work is presented. A short reply is plenty, and “no” is a perfectly good answer: we will follow it.

With thanks and respect for your work,

[Maintainer’s name] Maintainer, Pali Canon for Claude — https://github.com/DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude Reply to: [maintainer’s email address]