Manasara Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Manasara-Shilpashastra; III. Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Manasara: Translation; V. Architecture of Manasara: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v4.c29.s1.2

v4.c29.s1.2

It was the great Director General of Archaeology, Sir John Marshall, who conceived the idea, and advised Lord Pentland, the then Governor of Madras, to get a reliable version of the standard work on Indian architecture scientifically edited and properly elucidated, together with sketches, diagrams, and measured drawings, when he (Sir John Marshall) came to know, through Dr. F. W. Thomas, then Librarian of the India Office, London, that I had been working for some time as a Government of India State scholar on the subject in consultation with Mr. E. B. Havell and under the guidance of Dr. L. D. Barnett of the British Museum, Dr. Thomas himself, and Dr. J. Ph. Vogel of Leyden. But the unfortunate coincidence of His Excellency's retirement and Sir John's absence from India at the time of my arrival in Madras upset the preliminary arrangement made for the publication from Madras. On my appointment to the Indian Educational Service in the United Provinces, Sir Claude F. de la Fosse, the then Director of Public Instruction, and the first Vice-Chancellor of the reconstructed Allahabad University, took up the matter with scholarly interest and induced the great educationist Governor, Sir Harcourt Butler, to sanction the publication on behalf of the United Provinces Government, through the Oxford University Press.