Vedic Society API

This API fetches the meanings of nouns from vedic literature. The nouns are categorised as flora, fauna, geography, food, relationships, and more groups. The JSON response contains the word in Nagari script and transliterated roman script, the meaning, and the category.

[
  {
    "category": "law",
    "description": "thief",
    "nagari": "तायु",
    "word": "tayu"
  }
]

Timeout

This API is offline since 28 Nov 2022, when Heroku pulled its free plan, and will remain offline till I find something else. The sandbox won't work, therefore.

Base URL

https://api-vs.herokuapp.com/vs/v2/

Methods

Only GET calls are supported.

Example requestExample response

For the request parameters, see Endpoints.

curl -X 'GET' \
    'https://api-vs.herokuapp.com/vs/v2/words/ash' \
    -H 'accept: application/json'

For the response parameters, see Response parameters.

[
  {
    "category": "law",
    "description": "defendant, mentioned in the list of victims of purushmedh (human sacrifice)",
    "nagari": "अभिप्रश्निन",
    "word": "abhiprashnin"
  },
  {
    "category": "plant",
    "description": "Odina pinnata, Prosopis spicigera, or Mimosa suma",
    "nagari": "अजशृङ्गी",
    "word": "ajashringi"
  },
  ...
]

Endpoints

All parameters are path parameters. To form the request URL, the endpoint must be appended to the base URL.

request URL = base URL + endpoint

The following endpoints are available.

`/words/{word}`

Returns all nouns, transliterated from Sanskrit to the Roman script, that contains the specified word or phrase. For example, /words/shat returns the entries for all words that contain shat, such as kshatriya, prishat, or shatapati.

{word} is a string parameter.

`/descriptions/{description}`

Returns all nouns where the meaning contains the specified phrase. For example, /descriptions/horse returns all descriptions that contain the word horse.

To get all nouns that contain horse (rather than all descriptions that contain horse), use the words parameter instead, and use a Sanskrit word for horse, such as ashwa.

{description} is a string parameter.

`/categories/{category}`

Returns all nouns that belong to the specified category. The following categories are available.

Subject to explore	Available categories
Flora	`grass`, `plant`, `tree`
Fauna	`animal`, `bird`, `cattle`, `fish`, `insect`, `snake`, `worm`
Things	`building`, `chariot`, `food`, `grain`, `metal`, `object`, `ship`, `weapon`, `war`
Measurements	`number`, `distance`, `time`, `weight`
Geography	`mountain`, `place`, `river`
Knowledge	`astronomy`, `disease`, `literature`, `medicine`, `poison`, `subject`
Entertainment	`dicing`, `games`, `music`
Toilette	`clothing`, `hair`, `ornament`
Legal	`law`, `morals`
Societal	`agriculture`, `caste`, `family`, `occupation`, `priest`, `royalty`, `trade`, `tribe`

For example, /categories/clothing returns all nouns that are tagged as an item of clothing.

A noun can belong to more than one category. For example, aj is both an animal and the name of a tribe.

{category} is a string parameter.

Response parameters

All the endpoints return a response in the following format:

{
  "nagari": "string",
  "word": "string",
  "description": "string",
  "category": "string"
}

The word, description, and category parameters are already described in Endpoints. Here's a description of the nagari parameter.

nagari: The word itself in Sanskrit, represented in the Nagari script. For example, अजशृङ्गी.

Live sandbox

See Vedic Society API: Try it out.

See Index.