Fwd: Publishing and writing business...

[Guest guest]

, " Dr Satya Prakash Choudhary "

<satyaprakasika wrote:

 

 

 

 

A well known publisher (of mediocre astrology books in Telugu) from

Rajahmundry once allowed me to see his private collection after I

did, what he thought was a very good reading, for him. He lent me a

few books from his collection of old books. During our conversation,

we touched upon many topics and he revealed many things to me. He

told me about this famous panchanga writer who has made a name for

himself and accused him of being a fraud. He even proved what he

said by showing me two books that were fully (100%)identical except

for the title and author's name. It seems this reasonably famous

panchanga writer had taken away some manuscripts written by his guru

(teacher) after he died without the knowledge of his guru's

children. He later got them published under his name. Unfortunately

for him, he didn't know that one of those manuscripts was already

published long back. So here we had two identical books under two

different authors' names! That plagiarist is now masquerading as a

scholar and even writes in his panchanga that he is the asthana

astrologer for a famous Shiva temple in Andhra, which he may very

well be.

 

 

Unfortunately he is more famous than scholars like Sri Madhura ji

for various reasons. When I enquired in Rajahmundry about other

astrologers, some local people say, " Madhura Krishnamurti garu is

probably a scholar, but he tells weird things that no other Vastu

pundit tells " . On probing further I came to know that it is

perceived so because Sri Madhura ji's kniowledge of Vastu being

authentic and derived from the best classics, he was advocating

things that were at times against popular versions of Vastu. The

others ridicule him for his authentic knowledge! In fact Sri Madhura

Krishnamurthi's 4 volume Vastu books are used by the Telugu

University as standard recommended books for Vastu. So much for

scholarship and pseudoscholarship. Of course Madhura ji is also

known for his infamous ayanamsa and a panchanga that follows

different methods of calculation. But there is no such scope/reason

as far as his Vastu books are concerned. To my knowledge, apart from

the Manasara series by Sri Prasanna Kumar Acharya, there is no

better work than Sri Madhura Krishnamurti's work on Vastu. Of course

there are nice translations of texts such as 'Mayamata' by Bruno

Dagens etc. But I am talking of a thorough and authentic scholarly

work that one can follow as a text/guide as far the Vastu sastra is

concerned.

 

 

 

More about the publisher's stories now. The publisher confessed that

he was giving old books to jobless young men and women with some

interest in astrology and writing and that these people were writing

more than half of his books! He justified saying that he had to do

this as other publishers were doing the same and that the

competition is fierce. Who reads books with the proliferating TV

channels, was his question, a question that was not interested in an

answer! Any title that a rival publisher successfully publishes, has

to be matched soon by another, no matter the source.

 

 

And now about ghost writers. Without mentioning the names of the

books or publishers, I can say with confidence that some writers

never existed! Old books are plagiarised, badly redone (because the

writer/plagiarist often doesn't know well what he is doing) and

published under ghost names too. This is a problem in subjects like

Jyotisha, Mantra and Tantra.

 

 

Add to this the inflow of new titles into the market by writers who

write commentaries to classics with nearly no knowledge of Sanskrit.

Don't the readers expect the translator of such books to have a

knowledge of SANSKRIT? Perhaps not, because majority of the readers

also unfortunately don't have a knowledge of Sanskrit. So how can

they see through this game? Few have. But....

 

 

 

Regards,

Satya Prakash

 

--- End forwarded message ---