Talk:Satyam Shivam Sundaram (सत्यम् शिवम् सुंदरम्)
The wiki now has information on the translations of four of the five the English books in the so-called Mantra Series, all but Sat Chit Anand. All so far have been incomplete translations. No complete translation of any of these books seems to have been done. This is somewhat unusual, so interest is stirred as to why this might be so.
One possibility is that they were simply caught in a trend of the time. In 1988, Rebel was experimenting with putting out a number of small Hindi compilations to give potential new readers a taste of Osho in relatively inexpensive books. Most were not translations but re-issues, in very abridged form, of some favourite themes, among them Osho's talks on Kabir and Meera. The hot new books available for translation were the Mantra Series books.
As it turned out, the original English Satyam Shivam Sundram yielded not one but two translations, both consistent with the other Mantra Series "mini-translations" in that their chapters were not necessarily whole-chapter translations but "selected questions". Perhaps the thematic coherence of this way was preferred over the sprawling anarchy of the full English originals. A few whole chapters was the usual format of the non-translated mini-compilations.
Whatever the reason(s) for the lack of a complete translation of the Mantra Series books, there is one other striking feature of the 1988 mini-compilations, and that was their covers. All have the same fairly studious picture of Osho on the cover, with his face taking pretty much the whole cover in all but one.
This is the case for SSS's two translations and for that of Om Mani Padme Hum. The translation of Hari Om Tat Sat is still a "mini" but does not have this distinctive cover. It was published in 1989, so maybe that aspect of the mini-experiment was winding down. Regarding the translation of Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, we know it was a mini but do not have info about the Rebel edition, only the later Diamond edition. We may reasonably speculate at this point that, assuming a chronological order of translation and publication, OSSS's translation did not have this cover, since OSSS was the last of the Mantra Series talks, and that SCA's translation, if and when its Rebel edition shows up, will have this cover.
More on the 1988 experiment at Talk:Mahavir Vani (महावीर वाणी) (mini-compilation). -- doofus-9 19:39, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
