Ramayana Book MCP Server

ramayana-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for the Ramayana Book (svenkatreddy/ramayana-mcp). Search verses, fetch Sanskrit plus English/Hindi/Telugu translations, and get a deterministic verse of the day. Same codebase serves three targets:

• stdio (src/stdio.ts) — Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Smithery hosting
• Vercel serverless (api/mcp.ts) — stateless JSON-RPC over HTTP at /api/mcp (dependency-free handler; the SDK's ESM transport crashes Vercel's runtime)

Tools

Tool	What it does
list_kandas	The seven kandas with Sanskrit titles and chapter counts
get_verse	One verse by kanda, sarga and verse number
get_sarga	Every verse of one sarga, optional language filter
search_verses	Full-text search across all four languages, with snippets
verse_of_the_day	Deterministic verse of the day (see below)

Plus a ramayana://kandas resource with kanda/chapter/verse counts.

Verse of the day

verse_of_the_day hashes the calendar date (FNV-1a, YYYY-MM-DD, UTC by default) and maps it uniformly onto all 24,214 indexed verses. The same date always returns the same verse; pass an explicit date to look up any other day.

Local setup

npm install
npm run build-index   # builds data/ from a Ramayana_Book checkout
npm run build
npm start             # stdio server

build-index reads the Ramayana_Book repo from RAMAYANA_BOOK_DIR (default: ../../ramayana-modernization/repo relative to this package).

Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ramayana-book": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/ramayana-mcp/dist/src/stdio.js"]
    }
  }
}

Deploy on Vercel (free Hobby plan, no payment needed)

1. Push this directory to a new GitHub repo (create the repo yourself on github.com).
2. In the Vercel dashboard: Add New Project -> Import the repo -> Deploy.
3. No build config needed; vercel.json already ships the data/ files with the function. The MCP endpoint is https://<project>.vercel.app/api/mcp.

The endpoint is stateless (one POST per JSON-RPC request, no sessions), which fits the Hobby plan's function limits. Point any MCP client at the URL above.

Publish on Smithery (for discoverability)

1. Push the repo to GitHub (public) - done: svenkatreddy/ramayana-mcp.
2. Go to smithery.ai, sign in with GitHub.
3. Add / deploy the ramayana-mcp repo. smithery.yaml declares the TypeScript runtime; Smithery installs, builds, and imports createServer plus configSchema from src/index.ts. No API keys or config needed.

Smithery hosts the server and gives it a registry page with one-click install for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other clients.

Data and attribution

Verse data is built from the Ramayana_Book repository:

• Sanskrit: Sanskrit Wikisource (Wikimedia); 3 chapters restored from IIT Kanpur's critical edition
• English: Valmiki Ramayan Dataset (MIT) — M.N. Dutt's translation (1891-1894), IIT Kanpur, Gyaandweep
• Hindi: Chaturvedi Dwarka Prasad Sharma's Hindi Ramayana (used with permission)
• Telugu: Telugu Wikisource contributors (CC BY-SA)

Re-run npm run build-index after the Ramayana_Book translations change.

License

The server code in this repo is MIT licensed (see LICENSE).

The verse data under data/ carries the licenses of its sources, not MIT: Sanskrit from Sanskrit Wikisource (Wikimedia), English from the MIT-licensed Valmiki Ramayan Dataset, Hindi from Chaturvedi Dwarka Prasad Sharma's translation (used with permission), Telugu from Telugu Wikisource contributors (CC BY-SA). See the Ramayana_Book translation sources for full attribution.