The Natyasastra: English Translation with Critical Notes

loved it !

The author did a real good job in his translation of the treatise.Its very well written. I do recommend strongly for any one interested. //Gopal//.

Not Really A Translation But A Misleading InterpretationSo far there only exists in the English language a set of very bad translations of the Natya Shastra. This one is further adds to the problem. There is no way to translate the Natya Shastra without also expressing its meaning in the Vedic paradigm in which it was written - This work is a Vedic Shastra after all.Earlier translations had the principal defect of translating the Sanskrit into incomprehensible or just very strange English. Rangacharaya's version is readable - but at the cost of sacrificing most of the essential meaning of the text. As a result, the English text provided by Rangacharya is not really a translation but greatly diminished rather distorted version of the original. There is absolutely no sense of the texts deeper or greater meaning - which is in every sentence of the text. In this version you could hardly guess that such a deeper meaning exists. Instead Rangacharya has gone for trying to expound the meaning of the words as if this was a contemporary "How To Do Theatre" text. If you want to understand the Vedic Natya - this text will not help you.

Easy to read, good book.

Good Book