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

PREFACE
History of Publication
IN 1834, in his Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus, Rām Rāz
referred to the contents of the first few chapters of the Mānasāra
from a fragmentary manuscript he had access to. Since then more
manuscripts have been discovered, catalogued, and brought to the
notice of the public. But the Sanskrit scholars like Dr. G. Bühler and
Sir R. G. Bhandarkar have authentically branded this class of literature
as written in “most barbarous Sanskrit.”¹ Besides, the technical
terms and obsolete expressions of the Śilpa-śāstra, practically a lost
science, have had no place in any of the existing dictionaries. The
texts contain no drawings, diagrams, or sketches. The then buildings,
religious, military, especially residential, have mostly been destroyed,
partly by time and partly by foreign invaders. Obviously these diffi-
culties stood in the way of the elderly scholars and nobody had made
any attempt to deal with this huge text for over 80 years, when, being
induced by youthful enthusiasm, the present writer undertook in 1914
the task of giving “rebirth” to this “monumental work.”
The unsatisfactory condition, both original and accidental, of
the existing manuscripts of the śilpa-śāstra generally, and of the
Mānasāra in particular, aggravated the expedition into this unexplored
field of Sanskrit learning. The unknown ways have had to be
discovered at great pains and many new things had to be learnt after
bitter experience and elaborate experiments. The vast store of
literature on the subject and the inscriptions and other archaeological
records have had to be ransacked. Extensive tours in company with
trained architects and engineers have had to be undertaken, involving
great expenditure of time, money, and convenience from Landikotal
on the borders of Afghanistan to Rameswaram in the south, from
¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. 1, page 377 ; Ind. Ant., Vol. XII, page 140.