A Living Text for Today’s Readers
The English translation of the Manjusri Vastuvidya Sastra is well underway.
Few texts invite you to think about sacred space the way the Manjusri Vastuvidya Sastra does. This ancient Sanskrit treatise on design and building has long been out of reach for most readers, and Tara Lanka is delighted to report that its English translation is moving steadily toward publication.
At the center of the effort is Bertram Gregory Liyanage, Assisting Editor of the project. He is a PhD candidate at Temple University in Philadelphia, where his research spans Buddhist epistemology, phenomenology and the philosophy of language. He reads Sanskrit, Pali and classical Tibetan directly, so he sees how technical vocabulary shifts from one tradition to the next. For a text where terminology matters this much, that range is rare.
Right now, Bertram is doing two things. He is translating the Sanskrit terms that have never been rendered into English, drawing on published translations of other works in the same genres. And he is smoothing the register of the draft so it reads the way English is written and spoken today.
That second task matters. This book will be the only English version of the text for the foreseeable future, so it shouldn’t feel dated on the day it appears. The aim is a translation that is clear, natural and faithful to the original, one that welcomes architects, archaeologists, historians, students and practitioners, not only specialists in Buddhist studies.
Next, he will compare the revised English against the Sanskrit, look for new sources that either support or challenge the text’s claims, and compile a complete Sanskrit–English glossary for readers and future scholars.
Follow each stage in our full project report.
The illustration shows a text found in Sri Lanka allegedly dated to the 10th century
but it is not of the Manjusri Vastuvidya Sastra.