मानसार शिल्पशास्त्र (प्रसन्ना कुमार आचार्य - प्राचीन भारतीय स्थापत्य, नगर-नियोजन व मूर्ति-शिल्प महाकोश)

xii PREFACE

different work called Nara-pati-vijaya. The second part,
called Mānasāra-vāstu and also Kumāra-vāstu, contains
163 folios, each page of which has 16 to 24 lines. Each
line contains about three-quarters of a śloka. The ślokas
are not numbered; but on the last page the total is given
as 5,760 and this figure is not, of course, verified by actual
counting. This has been undoubtedly written by more
than one hand. But it is recorded on the last page that
this work has been written by one Rāmanuj chārya for the
Kumpāni bāhādur (the East India Company) in the
Śālivāhana Śaka era 1677. The date of its being recorded
is given in English, 14th April, 1823. The last page
contains the mark of a seal in three different scripts—
Urdu, Nāgarī, and Bengali. It begins with Chapter XV
(Pāda or Stambha), and folio 108b has the colophon of
the last chapter. The remaining folios 108 to 163 contain
the first fourteen chapters.
(C) This belongs to the Library of the India Office (E. 3141,
3014) and has been noticed by C. P. Brown in Eggeling's
Catalogue, page 1131. Dr. Goldstücker refers to it
in his Dictionary, page 284. It is written in Devanāgarī
character on paper 11" by 7". It contains 472 folios,
one page of which is left blank. Each page has 16 to 18
lines, each of which is a half śloka. Ślokas are numbered
up to folio 100. The colophons are not numbered in the
latter part. Most of the chapters are incomplete and des-
cribed in two places. The first sixteen chapters are
altogether lost. The first few pages are quite frag-
mentary. The fly-leaf contains the following: "This
portion of the शिल्पशास्त्र was copied from a very ancient
manuscript in the old Tamil character, discovered at
Trichinopoly. It was imperfect both at the beginning
and at the end. It was written out under the direction
of Charles Philip Brown, 1830." But "from various