समराङ्गणसूत्रधार (महाराज भोज - वास्तु, स्थापत्य एवं यंत्र शास्त्र)

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mountains and stored into a reservoir by building an embankment on the fourth
side. The fame of this wonderful lake resounded in popular memory throughout
the medieval times and has been preserved upto our own times in the Hindi
saying: Tāla to Bhopāla tāla aur sab talaiyā (ताल तो भोपाल ताल और सब तलैया). (i. e.
amongst lakes the foremost is the one called Bhopal Tal or the lake built by
King Bhoja, round which was planned the city of Bhopal, the others are mere
ponds of water).
The art of building embankments for artificial lakes has reached its
perfection in medieval India and its greatest example was that planned and
erected by Bhoja, that was perhaps equalled later on by the Rājasamudra lake
of King Rājasamudra of Chittor.
Of the other monuments raised by Bhoja and now in ruins or lost in
oblivion, it is tempting to speak in detail from the point of view of architecture
but that should await an exhaustive scientific survey by trained archaeologists
who should correlate the actual monuments with the detail furnished in the texts
of the Samarāṅgaṇa Sūtradhāra. The civil and religious architecture envisaged
in the present text was no figment of imagination but rooted in the solid facts
of the state policy pursued by King Bhoja for bestowing on his people as many
different kinds of architectural monuments as possible, both in the civil and
religious fields. It appears that his soul had some point of affinity with the
traditional architect of ancient times namely Viśvakarmā and he felt specially
delighted when some civil building with all the perfection of art known in his
time was brought into existence.
I wish to endorse fully the remarks of the previous editor about the
beautiful style of Sanskrit found in the Samarāṅgaṇa Sūtradhāra which it is a
pleasure to go through and relish its classical flavour : “Generally the language
of extant Śilpa works is ungrammatical, but the present work is free from
grammatical solecisms and written most in a sweet and beautiful style. The
work will prove to be of immense benefit to students of Indian architecture as
well as to those who wish to follow it in practice”.
Chapter 31 entitled ‘Yantra Vidhāna’ deals with a number of mechanical
contrivances, some of which at least seem to have been a fact of life, others
perhaps imaginary like the flying plane. This topic is unique to the Samarāṅgaṇa
Sūtradhāra and nothing similar to this is found in any other Śilpa text.
Dr. V. Raghavan has written a special exposition of its contents to which we
shall refer in our commentary on this work to be published as volume two.
I feel grateful to Dr. B. J. Sandesara for entrusting to me the editorship
of this second revised edition of the Samarāṅgaṇa Sūtradhāra which had long
become out of print. I now hope that this new edition together with its