1. And the soul of Viraf went, from the body, to the Chinwad bridge of Chakat-i-Daitik, and came back the seventh day, and went into the body. Viraf rose up, as if he arose from a pleasant sleep, thinking of Vohuman and joyful.

2. And those sisters, with the Dasturs of the religion and the Mazdayasnians, when they saw Viraf, became pleased and joyful; and they said thus: 'Be thou welcome, Viraf, the messenger of us Mazdayasnians, who art come from the realm of the dead to this realm of the living.' Those Herbads and Dasturs of the religion bowed before Viraf. And then Viraf, as he saw them, came forward and bowed, and said thus: 'For you is a blessing from Ohrmazd, the lord, and the archangels; and a blessing from the pious Zartosht, the descendant of Spitama; and a blessing from Srosh the pious, and Adar the angel, and the glorious religion of the Mazdayasnians; and a blessing from the remaining pious; and a blessing from the remaining spirits of paradise who are in happiness and repose.'

3. And afterward, the Dasturs of the religion said thus: 'A faithful minister art thou, Viraf, who art the messenger of us Mazdayasnians; and may thy blessing be for thee also. Whatever thou sawest, relate to us truly.'

4. Then Viraf spoke thus: 'First this is to be said, that to give the hungry and thirsty food is the first thing, and afterward to make inquiry of him, and appoint his task.'

5. Then the Dasturs of the religion assented thus: 'Well and good.' And well-cooked and savory food and broth, and cold water and wine were brought. They also consecrated the ceremonial cake; and Viraf muttered grace, and ate the food, and having finished the sacred repast, he said grace. And he recounted the praises of Ohrmazd and the archangels; and thanks to Hordad and Amurdad, the archangels; and he muttered the benedictions.

6. He also directed thus: 'Bring a writer who is wise and learned.' And an accomplished writer, who was learned, was brought by him, and sat before him; and whatsoever Viraf said, he wrote correctly, clearly, and explicitly.

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.