Mayamatam

by Bruno Dagens

The Mayamata is a Vastusastra, i.e. a treatise on dwelling, and as such it deals with all the facets of gods' and men's dwellings, from the choice of the site to the iconography of the temple walls. It contains numerous and precise descriptions of villages and towns as well as of the temples, houses, mansions and palaces. It gives indications for the selection of a proper orientation, right dimensions, and of appropriate materials. It intends to be a manual for the architect and a guidebook for the layman. Well-thought-of by traditional architects (sthapati-s) of South India, the treatise is of great interest at a time when technical traditions, in all fields, are being scrutinized for their possible modern application. The present bilingual edition prepared by Dr. Bruno Dagens, contains critically edited Sanskrit text which is an improvement over the earlier edition by the same scholar and published as No.40 of Publications de I'Institut Francaisd' Indologie, Pondicherry. The English translation, also published earlier, has now been revised with copious notes. The usefulness of the edition has been further enhanced by adding an analytical table of contents and a comprehensive glossary. In the series of Kalamulasastra early texts on music, namely, Matralaksanam, Dattilam and Brhaddest, have been published. The medieval texts on music, specially, the Sribastamuktavali (No.3 in the series) and the Nartananirnaya (No.17 in the series), bring us up to the 15th and 16th century. In the case of architecture, despite the IGNCA's endeavour to publish portions of the Brhatsamhita, the Agnipurana and the Visnudharmottara-Purana, first this has not been possible. Instead, our scholars were able to complete work first on a late but important text, namely, Silparatnakosa. We hope that the sections on architecture in the Brhatsamhita, the Agnipurana and the Visnudharmottara-purana which predate the medieval texts, will be published soon, alongwith revised and re-edited texts of Manasollasa and Aparajitaprccha. The Mayamatam is the fourteenth and fifteenth volumes in the Kalamulasastra series of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA).

978 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2008