I Built an Open-Source Buddhist Text Search Engine — Here's What I Learned

If you've ever tried researching Buddhist texts, you know the pain: scriptures are scattered across hundreds of databases worldwide — CBETA, SuttaCentral, BDRC, 84000... Searching a single topic means juggling a dozen sites, each with different formats, languages, and varying quality of experience. So I built FoJin (佛津) to bring it all together. What is FoJin? FoJin is an open-source platform that aggregates 504 data sources and 9,200+Buddhist texts across 21 languages (Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and more) into a single, searchable interface. 🔗 Live: fojin.app 📦 Source: github.com/xr843/fojin (Apache 2.0) Core Features 🔍 Multilingual Full-Text Search Built on Elasticsearch with ICU tokenization, supporting CJK, Sanskrit, Pali, and Tibetan scripts. Filter by dynasty, category, and source. 📖 Parallel Reading Compare different language translations of the same text side by side — for example, the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and English. 🤖 AI Q&A (XiaoJin) RAG-powered