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) v7.c49.19

v7.c49.19

The *Dictionary* is based mainly upon the second work mentioned above. I have had occasion to deal with the *Mānasāra* myself on one or two occasions, and I know how hopelessly corrupt the available manuscripts of the work are; and on more than one occasion, I have had to give up the task as hopeless. As Dr. Acharya remarks, it is a text which is written in five different scripts, possesses eleven badly preserved manuscripts, has undergone five recensions, and comprises more than 10,000 lines of a language rightly remarked by Dr. Bühler as the ‘most barbarous Sanskrit.’ To the ‘barbarism’ of the Sanskrit of *Mānasāra*, I can bear personal testimony. I remember that when, about fifteen years ago, I was asked to make sense out of a few extracts from the work, I had to give up the task in disgust. Dr. Acharya deserves to be congratulated, therefore, for having succeeded not only in making some sort of sense out of the ‘barbarous Sanskrit,’ but evolving out of it a readable text and thereby undertaking and completing a work that deserves to be accepted as a standard treatise on Ancient Indian Architecture and to be placed on the shelves of every decent library in the country.