This volume is the first in the 'Manasara' series - the treatise containing knowledge and experience in Town-planning, Architecture, Sculpture etc. of ancient India. The book is the outcome of years of studious research carried out by the Author to bring this vast, but almost forgotten, treasure-house within easy reach of all.
The present volume is a dictionary which devotes itself exclusively to the terminology of Hindu Architecture. Here the word architecture encompasses all activities of man connected with the satisfaction of one of his basic needs, i.e., shelter. All architectural terms found in Sanskrit works, epigraphic records and vaastushastra are presented here. The entries are arranged according to the alphabetical order of Sanskrit. The derivative and original signification of every technical word is investigated and illustrated by quotations from original sources to bring out every shade of its meaning.
Everyone interested in the Architecture of ancient India shall find this book authoritative on the subject.
Origin and scope of the work-This dictionary owes its name to the University of London'. A glossary of the architectural terms used in the Manasara, the standard work on Hindu architecture, was prepared for my private use when I found it indispensable after struggling for two and half years to edit for the first time and trans- late into English 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." In this connection there arose an occasion for me to express to the University the opinion that an Encyclopædia of Hindu architecture was badly needed. Architectural expressions appear throughout the whole field of general Sanskrit literature and the epigraphical records, as well as in the extensive special branch of literature known as Västu-bastras, more familiarly called Silpa-sastras. Existing dictionaries, in Sanskrit, English or any other language, do not elucidate architectural expres- sions: and the texts of the Västu-bastras have been waiting for hundreds of years to be unearthed from manuscripts which are quite inaccessible without the guidance of a special dictionary that would also be instrumental in bringing to light many new things hitherto left unexplained in inscriptions and general literature. The Univer- sity selected me as the person most immediately concerned and entrusted me with the task suggesting that I should "make a full dictionary of all architectural terms used in the Manasara, with explanations in English and illustrative quotations from cognate literature where available for the purpose."
Thus the terms included in this dictionary are primarily those found in the Manasära. But all the new architectural terms of any importance discovered in all the known architectural treatises, epigraphical documents, and general literature have also been added. I should estimate the new terms at about one-fourth of the total numbering approximately three thousand. No record has, however, been kept of the extent. of the architectural manuscripts or the general literature searched, but some 50,000 pages of archæological documents have been gone through almost line by line.
Extent of architectural terms comprehended-In the Vastu-sastras architecture is taken in its broadest sense and implies what is built or constructed. Thus, in the first place, it denotes all sorts of buildings, religious, residential, and military, and their auxiliary members and component mouldings. Secondly, it implies town-planning; layingout gardens; constructing market places; making roads, bridges, gates; digging wells, tanks, trenches, drains, sewers, moats; building enclosure walls, embankments, dams, railings, ghats, flights of steps for hills, ladders, etc. Thirdly, it denotes articles of house furniture, such as bedsteads, couches, tables, chairs, thrones, fans, wardrobes, clocks, baskets, conveyances, cages, nests, mills, etc.
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