Vedanta Yojana

Yatra Jñānam Pravāhati

A digital home for Sanātana Dharma literature, sacred-place records, and travel/yātrā planning — 108 Divya Desams, a growing digital library of original books, and the beginning of a much larger platform. Available on web and Android today.

Latest Release

Platform	Status
Android	Download the latest release →
Web	Live at vedantayojana.org
iOS	Coming soon — being prepared for the App Store

Before installing an Android release, see the APK Verification Guide to confirm a downloaded file is genuine.

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The Journey

Vedanta Yojana

Yatra Jñānam Pravāhati

Where the journey of knowledge continues

⸻

A Journey That Began Long Before the App

On 24 September 2018, I published my first piece of writing on a small Blogspot blog.

At the time, I had no idea where it would lead.

I had begun writing about the Mahābhārata—a subject that had fascinated me for years. Those early writings would eventually grow into my first book, Jaya: A Journey of the Mahābhārata.

But the story of Vedanta Yojana really begins much earlier than 2018.

I grew up listening to stories.

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting with my late maternal grandparents as a young boy, perhaps three or four years old, listening to stories from the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and countless other narratives that formed part of the world I was growing up in.

I was fascinated by them.

The stories were not simply stories to me. They contained people, choices, dilemmas, devotion, philosophy, morality, triumphs, failures, questions and consequences. The more I heard, the more I wanted to understand.

And as I grew older, I began to notice something.

Many people around my age simply did not know these stories.

Sometimes my interest in them made me the person in a friend group who was considered unusually “religious” or spiritually inclined. At times, it even became something to be teased about.

But despite that, I always had a feeling that these stories mattered.

They were part of the cultural inheritance I had received from the generations before me.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept thinking:

How do we preserve this?

I didn’t know the answer.

I didn’t even know what I was eventually going to build.

I only knew that I wanted to do something.

⸻

From a Blog to Books

The blog was my first step.

I started writing, learning as I went.

The platforms changed over time.

Blogspot became Blogger. Blogger became WordPress. WordPress eventually became Wix.

The platforms changed, but the writing continued.

Along the way, I also started the Vedanta Yojana Instagram page, experimenting with shorter forms of writing, reflections and microblogging.

Then I discovered Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

For the first time, publishing a book was no longer something that seemed distant or inaccessible.

I could write.

I could prepare the manuscript.

I could publish it.

And so I did.

One book became two.

Two became three.

Eventually, the number became five.

Each book represented another piece of a journey that had started with a young boy listening to stories from his grandparents and wondering why these narratives had captured his imagination so completely.

Yet, even after publishing those books, something continued to bother me.

I wasn’t completely satisfied.

⸻

Wanting to Do More

Publishing through Amazon gave me an avenue to make my books available, but I increasingly wanted something different.

I wanted to have a more hands-on relationship with my work.

I wanted to determine how the content was organized.

I wanted to bring different pieces of my writing together.

I wanted the stories, books, ideas and resources to exist somewhere that was not simply a collection of individual books on a marketplace.

Most importantly, I wanted to create something that could grow.

Something that could become a home for the work.

That idea gradually evolved into something much larger than publishing books.

It became the idea of building a digital platform for knowledge, literature, travel and exploration rooted in Sanātana Dharma.

And that is where Vedanta Yojana began to take shape.

⸻

The Influence of My Acharyas and Teachers

This journey was also shaped by the people from whom I have had the privilege of learning.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Sri U.Ve. Dushyanth Sridhar.

His upanyāsams, teachings and courses through Abhinava e-Patashala became an important building block in my own journey.

Through digital platforms, I was able to experience traditional teachings in a form that could reach someone wherever they happened to be. That experience helped me recognize something important:

Digital media could be a vehicle for preserving and sharing knowledge rather than merely a source of entertainment.

The ability to encounter traditional knowledge through contemporary technology helped me begin imagining how my own writing and content could eventually exist in different digital forms.

That influence became part of the foundation for what Vedanta Yojana would eventually become.

The journey from listening to stories as a child, to writing about them, to publishing books, and finally to attempting to build a digital platform around them did not happen in isolation.

It was shaped by the teachers from whom I learned, the people who encouraged me, and the traditions that gave me something worth preserving in the first place.

⸻

From Writing to a Digital Yojana

The name Vedanta Yojana existed before the app.

But the app represents the next stage of what that name has come to mean to me.

It is not simply an e-book reader.

It is not simply a travel guide.

It is not simply a library.

It is an attempt to bring several parts of the journey together in one place.

At its heart is a digital library—a place where my books and future works can live, evolve and become accessible beyond the limitations of traditional publishing.

Alongside that is a Sanātana Dharma travel guide, beginning with the 108 Divya Desams, providing information intended to help people discover these sacred places, understand their traditions and eventually plan journeys around them.

The larger vision is to bring together:

• Books and literature
• Stories and knowledge
• Sanātana Dharma
• Temple and pilgrimage information
• The 108 Divya Desams
• Travel and yātrā
• Calendars and important observances
• Writing and reflections
• Future educational and cultural resources

The goal is not to separate these things into isolated pieces.

The goal is to allow them to exist together.

Because reading about a place can lead to wanting to visit it.

Learning a story can lead to wanting to understand its tradition.

Understanding a tradition can lead to wanting to travel.

And a journey can lead back to knowledge.

That cycle is central to the idea behind Vedanta Yojana.

⸻

Why “Yojana”?

The word Yojana carries the sense of a plan, undertaking, arrangement or purposeful endeavor.

That felt appropriate.

This application is not the culmination of a single project.

It is the continuation of one.

The writing began in 2018.

The fascination began decades earlier.

The books came afterward.

And now the digital platform is another step in the same journey.

There is still much more to build.

⸻

Nearly Eight Years in the Making

Looking back, the path seems almost impossible to have planned.

A young child listening to stories from his grandparents.

A fascination with the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata and Bhāgavata.

A young person wondering why these stories seemed increasingly distant from people of his generation.

A blog created on 24 September 2018.

Years of writing.

Multiple changes of platforms.

An Instagram experiment.

The discovery of independent publishing.

Five books.

The opportunity to learn through digital upanyāsams and courses.

And eventually the decision to stop thinking only about individual publications and start thinking about a digital ecosystem.

I did not know in 2018 that I would eventually build an application.

I certainly did not know exactly what that application would become.

But every stage brought me closer to it.

⸻

An Idea Is Never Enough

I have had many ideas over the years.

Some became blog posts.

Some became books.

Some became abandoned experiments.

And some eventually became Vedanta Yojana.

But an idea by itself is not enough.

It needs people who encourage you when it is still only an idea.

It needs people who tolerate the endless iterations.

It needs people who help you when you don’t know how to take the next step.

It needs people who believe in what you are trying to accomplish, sometimes before you have figured out exactly how to accomplish it yourself.

I have been fortunate to have those people in my life.

My parents have been one of the greatest backbones of this entire journey.

There have been many stages to this project—writing the first blog, publishing the first book, writing the next one, changing platforms, experimenting with different forms of media, and eventually attempting something as ambitious as building an application.

Through all of those stages, they supported me.

Not every idea I had was necessarily obvious or conventional.

But I was given the space, encouragement and support to pursue them.

That support matters more than I can adequately put into words.

And now, I have another person beside me who has become an important part of this journey: my wife.

Vedanta Yojana as it appears today is not solely the product of my ideas.

She has contributed significantly to the design and presentation of the application, helping shape many of the visual decisions that ultimately became part of the experience users see today.

There is a difference between having an idea and being able to turn that idea into something another person can actually experience.

Her input, patience, creativity and willingness to work through the many iterations of the app have helped bridge that gap.

For that, I am immensely grateful.

So while this application may carry my vision and my work, it carries the contributions of many people who helped make that vision possible.

⸻

The First Public Release

Today, on the first Purattasi Saturday of 2026, I am opening the next chapter.

Vedanta Yojana is now ready for the public.

The application is currently available as:

• Android
• Web

I have now joined the Apple Developer Program, and am preparing Vedanta Yojana for the App Store so that it can reach Apple devices as well.

This release is therefore not an ending.

It is a beginning.

The version you see today is the result of years of writing, learning, experimenting, publishing, designing, rebuilding and trying again.

There are features that will continue to evolve.

There are ideas that have not yet been implemented.

There are books yet to be added.

There are journeys yet to be planned.

There is knowledge yet to be organized.

And there is a great deal more that I hope Vedanta Yojana can eventually become.

⸻

What I Hope This Becomes

I don’t want Vedanta Yojana to be just another application that someone downloads, uses once and forgets.

I want it to become a living repository of knowledge and experience.

A place where someone can discover a book.

Where someone can read a story they have never encountered before.

Where someone can learn about a Divya Desam.

Where someone can plan a pilgrimage.

Where someone can return to a book years later.

Where future works can be published.

And perhaps, most importantly, where someone who did not grow up hearing these stories can encounter them for the first time.

If even one person who opens this application becomes curious enough to ask,

“What is this story?”

and then goes looking for the answer,

then something worthwhile has already happened.

⸻

A Humble Offering

There is one final acknowledgment that belongs at the heart of this release.

To the Divya-Dampati, whose grace I seek; to my Acharyas and Guru, whose teachings have guided me; to my parents, my wife, my family, and everyone who has encouraged my writing and supported this journey over the years:

Thank you.

This release is a humble offering of a journey that was never mine alone.

⸻

This Is Only the Beginning

Vedanta Yojana has travelled a long way to reach this point.

From stories told to a young child.

To a blog.

From a blog to books.

From books to a digital library.

From a fascination with sacred stories to an attempt to create a platform where knowledge, literature and yātrā can flow together.

And now, nearly eight years after that first blog post, I am finally ready to put this work into the hands of the public.

I don’t know exactly where this journey will go from here.

But I know where it began.

24 September 2018.

And I know why it began.

To preserve what I had received.

To share what I have learned.

And to create something that might allow the journey to continue long after the person who started writing it has moved on to the next chapter.

⸻

Vedanta Yojana

Yatra Jñānam Pravāhati

The journey continues. The knowledge flows.

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What Is Vedanta Yojana?

Vedanta Yojana is a digital platform for Sanātana Dharma literature, sacred-place records, and travel/yātrā planning. It began as a personal writing project and has grown into a shared content model — the same validated content — served through both a website and a native Android app.

At its core today are two things: a digital library of original books, and a travel guide to the 108 Divya Desams. Both are meant to grow into a larger whole, as described in The Journey above.

Current Features

Everything below reflects what is actually implemented, not planned:

• 108 Divya Desams — complete temple records, each available in English, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, and Telugu, with regional classification
• Digital library — 4 full-length books (227 chapters): A Brief Insight to Visishtadvaita Philosophy, Sri Rama Charithram, Srimad Bhagavata Kathasagaram, and JAYA: A Journey of the Mahabharata, plus a Knowledge section — readable online and downloadable for offline reading
• Offline Pasurams — Pasuram PDFs for all 108 Divya Desams in Sanskrit, English, Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu (540 in total, sourced from Prapatti.com), bundled directly into the app; no network connection required
• Search — across Divya Desams, the Library, and Knowledge records
• Daily Panchangam — daily Panchangam and Sankalpam for the place you are in, named on screen ("Chennai"), not an assumed fixed city. Calculated on the device in the traditional Sri Vaishnava reckoning (the reckoning of Sri Ahobila Mutt's calendar), so it works offline and anywhere in the world: tithi, nakshatram, sunrise/sunset, the kaalams, Ekadasi and Dvadasi Paranai, and the tirunakshatrams of the Āzhvārs, acharyas and Azhagiyasingars. See Panchangam
• Divya Desam Spotlight — a daily-rotating featured temple on the home screen
• Reading preferences — font scale, light/dark theme, reading-position memory, and bookmarks
• Multilingual interface — English, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, and Telugu, consistent across both web and mobile
• Over-the-air updates (Android) — from v16 (1.0.3) on, content and JavaScript fixes reach installed apps through EAS Update, with no reinstall; verified end to end on a physical device

Platforms

Platform	Status
Web (any modern browser)	Live — vedantayojana.org
Android	Available — see Latest Release
iOS	Not yet available — being prepared for the App Store

Screenshots

Not yet published here. The best current look at the app is to visit vedantayojana.org directly, or install the latest Android release.

Roadmap

Current

• 108 Divya Desams, digital library, offline Pasurams, search, Panchangam, multilingual support — all live today on web and Android

In Development

• iOS release on the App Store

Future

• Additional books added to the digital library
• Expanded travel/yātrā planning around the Divya Desams
• Expanded calendar and observance functionality
• Further educational and cultural resources, as described in The Journey

Technology

• Web — Next.js (static export via output: "export"), deployed to a custom domain over GitHub Pages
• Mobile — Expo (React Native), built and signed via EAS (Expo Application Services)
• Shared content model — a single, schema-validated content source (content-lib/) consumed by both front ends, so web and mobile stay in sync rather than maintaining duplicate content
• Language — TypeScript throughout

Full technical detail: Development & Architecture.

Releases

Android releases are published to a dedicated public releases repository: vedanta-yojana-releases.

Each release includes the APK and its SHA-256 checksum. Before installing, see the APK Verification Guide to confirm a downloaded file is genuine.

Upgrading an older install to v16 (1.0.3):

Installed version	What to do
v13 (1.0.0)	The app shows an "Update available" notice that opens the v16 download; v16 installs over it and keeps your data.
v14 (1.0.1) or v15 (1.0.2)	These were debug-signed test builds. The app shows an update notice, but Android will refuse to install v16 over them. Uninstall first (this removes local app data such as bookmarks and downloaded books), then install v16.
v10 (1.0.0)	No update notice appears (v10 checks an address that no longer exists). Download v16 from the releases page; it installs over v10 and keeps your data.
v16	Nothing to do — content and app fixes arrive automatically as over-the-air updates.

Documentation

• Development & Architecture — project history, system architecture, content pipeline, build/test/deploy architecture
• Security Architecture — threat model, dependency security, build/Android/network security, signing
• APK Verification Guide — how to confirm a downloaded Android release is genuine
• Traffic & Install Measurement — what is measured, where, and why none of it is in the app
• Panchangam — how the daily Panchangam is reckoned, how it was verified worldwide, and the monthly Sri Ranganātha Pādukā update
• Vulnerability Reporting — how to report a security issue

Security & verification summary

• The Android release is signed using this project's production signing credentials, managed remotely by EAS (Expo Application Services) — not a local development key.
• Each release on GitHub is published with its SHA-256 checksum and signing-certificate fingerprint, so any downloaded APK can be independently confirmed — see the APK Verification Guide. The Android app is distributed only through GitHub, not through any app store.
• Dependency vulnerabilities are tracked via Dependabot and npm audit; known issues are patched or remediated and covered by automated regression tests.
• Full detail: Security Architecture · How to verify an APK · Vulnerability reporting

Privacy & data summary

• No analytics, advertising, crash-reporting, or tracking SDK is present in the mobile app's dependencies, and no third party receives anything about a reader. The Android app reports which screens are opened and how far a chapter is read, to this project's own endpoint, as totals across everyone — no identifier, nothing stored on the device, and routes taken by fewer than five readers discarded. The iOS app reports none of it.
• The website (vedantayojana.org) carries cookieless, aggregate measurement of which pages are read, which page is opened next, and how far down a page readers reach — all as totals across everyone, with no identifier stored or sent and routes taken by fewer than five readers discarded. Page-view measurement — no cookies, no client-side storage, no cross-site identifier, no individual profiles. Separately, the version-check and Library-catalog requests the app already makes to that site are counted by country at the network edge; that counting observes traffic that already exists and adds nothing whatsoever to the app. Full detail, including exactly what is and is not recorded: docs/ANALYTICS.md.
• No account or sign-in is required or offered.
• Network requests fetch public content (Library book updates, version checks) from this project's own GitHub Pages site over HTTPS; nothing in the audited source uploads user data anywhere. The source is public, so this can be checked directly.
• Location access (coarse/fine) is used only to calculate the day's Panchangam on the device for the user's approximate location (the coordinates are not sent to any calendar service), and to name that place on screen so the reader can see which place the Panchangam and Sankalpam are valid for. On Android the name comes from the device's own OS geocoder; on the website, from BigDataCloud's public, key-less reverse-geocoding endpoint, which receives the coordinates being named and nothing else. See docs/privacy-policy.html.
• Full detail, including a permission-by-permission table: docs/SECURITY.md.

Offline functionality

All Pasurams are bundled inside the app itself and work with no network connection at all — verified on a physical device with Wi-Fi and mobile data both disabled. Library books you've downloaded remain available offline; checking for new or updated Library content and checking for app updates both require connectivity. See Pasuram offline architecture.

The two runtimes

	Website (repo root)	Mobile (mobile/)
Framework	Next.js (output: "export", fully static)	Expo (React Native)
Status	co-equal target — full feature parity	co-equal target — full feature parity
Deploy	GitHub Pages, auto-deploys from main	Android: GitHub Releases (APK) plus over-the-air updates, GitHub only; iOS: App Store (in preparation)
Detail	—	see mobile/README.md

Both runtimes now carry the same feature set: content translation (Tamil/Kannada/Hindi/Telugu), a manual light/dark theme override, reading preferences (font scale), reading-position memory, bookmarks, a settings/onboarding flow, book cover art, and a daily-rotating "Divya Desam Spotlight" card — ported from mobile's implementation onto the website rather than redesigned, sharing the framework-agnostic pieces (content-lib/i18n.ts, content-lib/ordering.ts, content-lib/divya-desam-spotlight.ts, lib/preferences.ts, lib/ui-strings.ts, and every *-context.ts file) directly. Only the React Native-specific plumbing (AsyncStorage, useColorScheme, expo-router, haptics) has a web-specific equivalent (lib/storage.ts, components/providers/*). See mobile/README.md for mobile's own detail; the split of what's shared vs. platform-specific between the two is documented in each new web file's doc comment, tracing back to its mobile source.

Content pipeline

content/  →  content-lib/ (schemas + loader + search + i18n)  →  app/ (web) or mobile/app/

content/ is the single source of truth (JSON, validated by content-lib/schemas/). It currently holds:

• 108 Divya Desams
• 4 Books, 227 chapters total: A Brief Insight to Visishtadvaita Philosophy (51 chapters), Sri Rama Charithram (75), Srimad Bhagavata Kathasagaram (31), JAYA: A Journey of the Mahabharata (70)
• 1 Knowledge record

Neither runtime reads content/ directly — both go through content-lib/, and never hardcode content. See content-lib/README.md for the schema/loader contract.

Getting started

Website:

npm install
npm run dev            # http://localhost:3000
npm run test:content    # content-lib + schema tests
npm run test:app        # app-layer tests
npm run typecheck

Mobile (the real target — see mobile/README.md for full detail):

cd mobile
npm install
npx expo start          # scan the QR code with Expo Go on your phone
node --test tests/*.test.ts

After changing anything under content/: the website picks it up automatically (reads the directory live), but the mobile app does not — its content is a build-time snapshot. Always run:

node mobile/scripts/generate-content-manifest.ts

after adding, editing, or removing content, or the change won't appear in the mobile app.

Directory map

app/, components/, lib/	Website (Next.js)
mobile/	Mobile app (Expo) — see its own README
content/	The validated content itself (JSON)
content-lib/	Schemas, loader, search, i18n — shared by both runtimes
content-extraction/	Historical, read-only import pipeline used to bring source material into content/
scripts/	Import/build tooling that produces content/ and its published artifacts
source-material/	Source PDFs/books and their import reports
tests/	tests/content/ (content-lib), tests/app/ (website), tests/e2e/ (reserved, not yet built)

Sharing this repo with a collaborator

The repo is a single unit — there's no way to grant access to just mobile/ without splitting it into its own repo. Add collaborators via GitHub Settings → Collaborators and teams → Add people, with Write access for someone contributing code. For a quick UI/UX review session with no code access needed, npx expo start --tunnel from mobile/ shares a live QR code they can open in Expo Go on their own phone.

License & Copyright

The application source code is open source, under the MIT License.

The books, Divya Desam write-ups, translations, and the story above are original creative work by Vishnu Sreenivas and remain copyrighted — All Rights Reserved — unless a specific file says otherwise. The MIT License covers the software; it does not grant permission to reproduce or redistribute the books or other original content.

Third-party material bundled in this repository (for example, fonts and code inherited from a retired earlier version of the app) remains under its own original license, not MIT.

See CONTENT-LICENSE.md for the full breakdown, and SECURITY.md for how to responsibly report a security issue.