From the inspiration of the Chalukya monarch Someshwara III, Mānasollāsa is dedicated to expanding the encyclopedic expanse and continuity of our thought — finding joy in intellectual exploration: science, arts, history, polity, sport, and even the mundane inanities of everyday life.
Projects
Long-form studies that carry the encyclopedia's questions into new work — translation, music, design, and study.
The Mānasollāsa, rendered anew
A fresh, annotated English translation of selected books of the source encyclopedia — read alongside specialists in music, cuisine, and courtly craft, so the text speaks to practitioners and not only philologists.
Rāga & treatise
A study of the classical music theory embedded in medieval compendia, accompanied by newly commissioned recordings that let the ear test what the manuscripts describe.
The grammar of ornament
An examination of Indic systems of proportion and pattern across textile, temple, and manuscript, developed toward a travelling exhibition and a printed folio.
Knowledge systems reading group
A standing seminar on epistemology, aesthetics, and science in the Indic traditions — closed working sessions whose findings are published as short public papers.
Contact
Write to us about collaborations, proposals, or attending an event.
1st Block, Kalyana Nagar
Bangalore 560043
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Events
Talks, salons, and gatherings — conversations held in the open, grounded in primary sources.
Opening lecture — Why the Mānasollāsa still matters
An inaugural conversation on reading a twelfth-century encyclopedia as a living map of the arts and sciences.
Salon — Listening to a treatise
Musicians and scholars test the raga theory of the medieval compendia in real time, before an intimate audience.
Roundtable — Translating the untranslatable
Translators from Sanskrit, Kannada, and Tamil on carrying technical and aesthetic vocabulary across languages.