It was a remarkable event to witness the book release of “Narada Silpasastra”, an ancient Sanskrit text on Architectural Civil Engineering, authored by Prof. R. N. Iyengar, assisted by his colleagues, Dr. K. S. Kannan and Dr. S. Y. Wakankar. The foreword was written by Prof. Michel Danino. The book was published by JU Press.
The book was released by Dr. Chenraj Roychand, President, Jain University and Prof. Michel Danino, Member of Indian Council of History & Research (ICHR) and scholar of Indian Civilization. The other dignitaries present, Dr. C. G. Krishnadas Nair, Chancellor - Jain (Deemed-to-be University), Dr. N. Sundararajan, Vice Chancellor – Jain (Deemed-to-be University), Dr. Sandeep Shastri, Pro-Vice Chancellor - Jain (Deemed-to-be University), and Prof. N. V. H. Krishnan, Registrar - Jain (Deemed-to-be University).
The gathering was addressed by Dr. Chenraj Roychand, Prof. R. N. Iyengar and Prof. Michel Danino. They elaborated on the journey of the making of the book that culminated on its successful release.The book is a medieval text from the ancient times and is fully in prose form, which is an exception to other Sanskrit texts. After assembling various Sanskrit manuscripts on the subject, Prof. Iyengar critically clarified the originality and authenticity of the manuscripts and meticulously translated them from Sanskrit to English, including the vocabulary and the technical terms and ideas.
The book is a technical text that focuses on the ancient technical fields that are generally neglected. It also nullifies the greatly spread wrong notion that Indian knowledge systems has no applicability to today’s situations. It easily brushes aside the stereotype that knowledge in India is only among the elite.
The book has a lot of relevance to today’s issues, including water management, distribution, and conservation, highlighting the pressing need to focus on the knowledge of the ancient Sanskrit texts to civil engineering.
