Letter to Wisdom Publications

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Letter

Subject: Permission enquiry: Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translations in a free scripture-study tool

Dear Rights and Permissions team,

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.

Why we are writing. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translations of the Majjhima, Saṃyutta and Aṅguttara Nikāyas (with Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli for the Majjhima) are the standard modern English versions, and many readers ask for them by name. At present the tool only tells readers that these translations exist and links to Wisdom Publications. It does not contain or fetch any of their text, and it will not unless you agree.

We understand these are commercial publications, and we have no wish to reduce their sales: if anything, we would like to send readers to them.

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. Would Wisdom consider any of the following? We would be grateful for whichever, if any, you are comfortable with:

1. Allowing the tool to show a short quotation (for example, a few sentences around the passage asked about), with translator, publisher, copyright notice and a link to buy the book.
2. Allowing the tool to link readers directly to the matching passage in a Wisdom digital edition, if such links exist.
3. Any other arrangement you offer for free, non-commercial educational tools.

If the answer is no, we will keep the current link-only approach.

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]