India’s great stories and texts
Play through the classics of India’s languages, from ancient fables to the poetry of the saints, and pick up the language as you go, until you can read them yourself.
Explore the libraryClassical is coming soon. Explore the stories we’re preparing.
Read it in the original
How it works
Each lesson teaches the same words and lines either way. Choose how you want to meet them, and switch whenever you like.
Step into the world of the tale. Walk its streets, meet its people and unlock its lines one by one. The story never stops for a lecture. Words change shape before your eyes, and you understand them anyway.
The same lesson, laid out at a desk. Every word and form is explained with proper grammar, so you know exactly how each line works and why.
Your progress counts in both.
Scholar mode
Complete a whole text and Scholar mode opens. Every line of the original, unsimplified, is taken apart the way teachers have explained great texts for centuries. Here is the Hitopadeśa’s first line. Tap the words in step 03 to explore them.
अस्ति भागीरथीतीरे पाटलिपुत्रनामधेयं नगरम् ।
asti bhāgīrathītīre pāṭaliputranāmadheyaṃ nagaram · Hitopadeśa, prologue
Highlighted endings mark case. Tap any word to analyse it below.
Start with the verb, then its subject, then every other word.
Stories often open this way. “There is a city…” sets the scene before anything happens.
“On the bank of the Bhāgīrathī there is a city named Pāṭaliputra.”
The library
Every text is told in chapters, and every chapter in short lessons.
Fables of friendship and good counsel.
Couplets on virtue, wealth and love.
Plain-spoken verses of a weaver saint.
Songs of devotion from Junagadh.
Tagore’s song offerings.
The poet saint’s songs of the road to Pandharpur.
Ghazals of longing and wit.
Tulsidas’s telling of the Rāma story.
Your collection
Words and grammar rules from each lesson join your collection, and come back for a quick review just before you would forget them.
Classical is in development. The earlier story demos are now offline.
Explore the library