Serious students of the early texts can on go so far reliant on an English translation. For instance, where one translator gives us “”There’s no jhāna for one with no discernment,” another gives us, “There is no ecstasy without wisdom.” An accurate understanding often requires access of the common Pali source, Natthi jhānaṁ apaññassa. This page provides links to a number of useful tools available online for accessing the ancient texts. Please recommend others.

Digital Pali Reader

This is an amazing tool that provides access to (I believe) all of the Pali texts in Romanized Pali, but not in English translation. However it provides multiple Pali-English dictionaries, which can be accessed in conventional ways, but also by simply clicking on a word in a Pali text to open up English definitions, and also morphological analysis. It supports word counts by sutta for any Pali word.

PTS Pali Dictionary

This is a reliable old Pali to English dictionary from the Pali Text Society.

Sutta Central

This site provides texts from the Pali canon the Chinese canon and other sources with multiple translations in many languages. It is particularly suited for study of the Early Buddhist Texts with cross-references for comparative study. It also hosts a forum.

Access to Insight

This is an old site, no longer updated. It provides easy access to English translations of Pali texts, and somewhat awkward access from their into the Pali sources. It provides indices by topic, sutta name, simile, etc., and a lot of essays by various authors.

Dhamma Wheel

This is a very active forum for all things Theravada.

Paliverse Project

This provides access to Pali texts in both Romanized Pali and English, independently, side-by-side, or line-by-line.

PTS Converter

We often come across sutta references of the form “S ii 101.” These are references to specific pages within the PTS publication of the texts. This tool converts these references to formats used in other publications, including the Sutta Central “SN 12.64.” It also provides the Pali sutta name, in this case Atthirāgasutta.