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) v6.c42.s1.74

v6.c42.s1.74

Some idea of the magnitude of his labour can be gleaned from the fact that since 1834, when Ram Raz referred in his *Essay on the Architecture of Hindus* to the contents of a few chapters of *Mānasāra* from a fragmentary manuscript on which he had lighted, the field remained unexplored until in the year 1914 Professor Acharya stepped in with his great purpose and the scholar’s enthusiasm. The unravelling of the obscure text of *Mānasāra* was in itself a formidable endeavour. Men like Dr. G. Bühler and Sir Ramkrishna Bhandarkar had stigmatized it as written in the ‘most barbarous Sanskrit,’ while the last of those who have laid testimony to the distracting business of translating *Mānasāra* is that eminent scholar Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. Ganganatha Jha. The first work confronting Professor Acharya was, therefore, to compile an encyclopaedia of technical terms and the collation of illustrative quotations from cognate literature. He had then to travel from one end of the country to the other collecting and arranging a text written in five different scripts, possessing eleven badly-preserved manuscripts, subject to five recensions and comprising more than 10,000 lines of a disheartening language. In spite of the forbidding nature of the undertaking, however, Professor Acharya has triumphed as editor, commentator and translator.