Construction methods for the Sri Yantra

[gheil at cs.washington.edu]

Srinivasan:

Rao has several books on Sri Vidya. All of them, while
interesting and useful for the study of various aspects of Sri
Vidya, have the identical description of the Yantra 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