Construction methods for the Sri Yantra

[gheil at cs.washington.edu]

Srinivasan:

Rao has several books on Sri Vidya. All of them have the
identical description of the construction, complete with
inaccurate figures and methods.

The best method in a book that I have found is by Purnachandra
Rath of the Rourkela Law college. It leads to only 4 rather small
extra triangles. I have a Postscript description of this method.

PH Pott improves somewhat on Zimmers highly ambigous description
by fixing his figures.

However the citation I gave earlier to the architect Rory Fonseca
is the most accurate I have seen printed. Two very small extra
triangles. While the earlier work by Nicholas J Bolton and D.
Nicol G. Macleod showed it could be done exactly if the outline
was a square rather than a circle. I have seen examples where it
is inscribed on the surface of a hemisphere. In this case ALL of
the outer points touch the border!

> Is this a text or are you referring to texts like Lalita Trisati
> (?), Lalita Sahasranama, ...

Sorry mixing up the deity there with the text ;)

> ps: >>"public domain"
> Hasn't Tantra been so since Sir John Woodroffe :-)

I still have not found the method for this construction, and have
had my enquiries deflected by people who apparently do know. I
would be interested in excerpts from Dr Brooks work if it cites a
method.

Sincerely

Greg Heil

---- citations ----

SriChakraLekha
by Purnachandra Rath
publisher Smt Samana press in Rourkela

Yoga and Tantra
P H Pott
Publ Martinus Nijhoff, the Hague, 1966

The Geometry of the Sri Yantra
Nicholas J Bolton and D. Nicol G. Macleod
Religion (Academic Pr) v7n1p66 1977

Constructive Geometry and the Sri-Cakra Diagram
Rory Fonseca
Religion (Academic Pr) v16p33 1986

The SriVidya school of Sakta Tantrism
Douglas R Brooks, Harvard, PhD 1987