fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools

Name: fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools
Author: fojin

Buddhist canon tools: search, passages, cross-canon parallels, dictionaries — all URN-cited.

CommunityDegradedNo sign-inGlobalFreeRead-only

What it can do

What data it sees

Do you need an account

No: the server works without sign-in

Buddhist canon tools: search, passages, cross-canon parallels, dictionaries — all URN-cited.

How to connect

How to connect fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools to Claude

The server address to paste into Claude settings:

https://mcp.fojin.ai/mcp

Open Claude (claude.ai or the desktop app).
Go to Settings → Connectors.
Click Add custom connector.
Paste the server address copied below into Remote MCP server URL and click Add.
In a chat, click + → Connectors and switch the new connector on.

Custom connectors are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans (Free is limited to one). On Team and Enterprise an organization Owner adds the connector first under Organization settings → Connectors.

Authorization

After you click Add, a sign-in window for the service opens. Sign in with your own account and approve access. Claude never sees your password.

How to connect fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools to ChatGPT

The server address to paste into ChatGPT settings:

https://mcp.fojin.ai/mcp

Open ChatGPT in a browser (chatgpt.com). A Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu plan is required.
Turn on developer mode once: Settings → Apps → Advanced settings → Developer mode.
Open Settings → Connectors and click Create.
Fill in the form: Name (anything), Description (one line about what the service does), MCP server URL (copy it below).
Under Authentication choose OAuth if the service requires sign-in, otherwise None. Click Create.
In a new chat open + → Apps/Connectors and enable the connector.

OpenAI has renamed this section before (Connectors → Apps/Plugins). If the label differs, search settings for "developer mode". On Business/Enterprise workspaces an admin must allow custom connectors first.

Authorization

On first use ChatGPT opens the service's sign-in window. Sign in and approve access.

How to connect fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools to Cursor

The server address to paste into Cursor settings:

https://mcp.fojin.ai/mcp

Fastest: click Open in Cursor below and confirm the prompt.

Manually:

In Cursor open Settings → Cursor Settings → MCP and click Add new global MCP server.
Paste the JSON copied below into ~/.cursor/mcp.json (per project: .cursor/mcp.json in the repo root).
Save the file. The server appears in the MCP list; authorize it there if asked.

Authorization

If the service needs sign-in, an authorize button appears next to the server in the MCP list.

Server tool list (8)

Raw names from tools/list. Only developers need these.

search_corpus	Semantic search across fojin's Buddhist corpus (10K+ texts, 30+ langs). Returns the most relevant passages, each with a `urn`, title, snippet and similarity score. `lang` optionally filters by language code (lzh=Classical Chinese, pi=Pali, sa=Sanskrit, bo=Tibetan, en=English).
read_passage	Read the full content of one fascicle (卷) of a text, with its `urn`. Use the `text_id`/`juan_num` from a search_corpus hit. Returns the actual canonical text — quote from this, not from memory.
get_parallels	Cross-canon parallel passages aligned to a fascicle. fojin's alignment moat: given a Chinese fascicle, returns the aligned Pali/Tibetan/Sanskrit parallels so you can compare how a passage is rendered across traditions. A fascicle returns parallels for the whole juan — often hundreds. To narrow them to one passage, match the passage against `source_chunks[].text` and keep the parallels whose `aligns_source_chunk` equals that chunk_index. `urn` is filled for parallels that are fojin works; rows with `source="mitra-parallel"` are inline Skt/Tib sentences with no fojin work to cite, so they carry `original_preview` instead and stay `urn: null`.
lookup_dictionary	Look up a Buddhist term across fojin's dictionaries (748K+ entries).
lookup_entity	Search fojin's knowledge graph for entities — people, places, works, doctrinal terms — matching `query`.
resolve_urn	Resolve a fojin URN (e.g. fojin:cbeta/T0001.1) to a reader URL and confirm it exists in the corpus. Use to verify or dereference a citation.
verify_quote	Verify that a Buddhist-canon quote exists VERBATIM in the corpus. Call this before presenting any quoted scripture to a reader: LLMs routinely invent plausible-looking quotes. Returns `verbatim` (bool), where it was found (`matches`, each with a resolvable `urn`), or the closest near-miss window when it wasn't. `cite` optionally narrows the search — a CBETA id ("T0374") or fojin URN ("fojin:cbeta/T0374.13") — and `cite_matched` reports honestly whether the quote is where you claimed (a hit in a different fascicle does NOT confirm your citation). Quote must be ≥4 CJK chars after normalisation; Classical Chinese only. Short quotes are answered but say less: a four-character phrase recurs across the canon, so read `cite_matched` rather than `verbatim`, and check `matches_capped` before treating the list as complete. Each match carries an absolute `reader_url` — cite that, not a reconstructed third-party link.
commentaries	What the historical commentators said about a passage of Buddhist scripture. Give a line of a sūtra and get back the classical commentaries that gloss it — each with the commentator's own words, the work it comes from, a quality tier, and a resolvable citation. This is the layer no other tool exposes for the Chinese canon: CBETA marks up almost none of it, and the alignment behind this was derived text by text. Two things to read carefully rather than skim. `total` is how many commentators the passage actually has — `truncated` says the list you got is a sample. And coverage is partial: roughly half of what a commentator wrote is not aligned, so an absent commentator means "not in the data", never "he said nothing". When nothing matches, `available_sutras` tells you which sūtras have data at all — do not read a miss as silence from the tradition.