Mahakoshal-3 Letterhead

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This is the last of the letterheads that mention Osho's position in the Philosophy Dept at Mahakoshal Arts College. He continued to live at Yogesh Bhavan in Napier Town for a few more years, and that address is used in many more letterheads, but this is it for Mahakoshal.

Mahakoshal-2 Letterhead was created to correct an information-design problem in its predecessor but rarely got used. In the long period between Mahakoshal-1 and this one, the main one used was a new stripped-down NapierTown-1 Letterhead, with just the most basic name and address and no consideration apparently of design. Why might that have been? We can only speculate of course, but a look at the patterns of design and use has some potential value.

Possibly the Mahakoshal-2 was not used because Osho did not want to emphasize that part of his life. But when it came time to experiment with design matters, Mahakoshal-3 was where it happened. Its design innovations were two: a new, outrageous, almost messy font for his name, and a new layout which had previous elements moved closer together but now separated by horizontal and vertical lines. It first appeared in Nov 1962.

This outrageous font would show up again in a new NapierTown-2 Letterhead 8 1/2 months later, shortly before Mahakoshal-3 was discontinued. More curious appearances were on a couple of book covers, images below right. These small books have been tentatively estimated to have been published in 1961 and 1965, but the similarity of their pictures of Osho and their use of this outrageous font make it likely that one or both estimates are in error, with possibly both closer to 1963-ish.

The intersecting horizontal and vertical lines in this letterhead divide the space in the upper left corner into four quadrants. In the top right quadrant, we have, in the aforementioned outrageous, messy Devanagari font:

Acharya Rajneesh

And in the bottom left, in a more normal font:

Darshan Vibhag (Philosophy Department)
Mahakoshal Kala Mahavidhalay (Arts College)
115, Napier Town,
Jabalpur (M.P.)

This letterhead was used for some thirty letters (that we know of at this point). Most of them were written to Ma Anandmayee. Exceptions and publication info are noted below. Krantibeej refers to Krantibeej (क्रांतिबीज), where letter numbers are given, and BKBPO refers to the 2002 Diamond edition of Bhavna Ke Bhojpatron Par Osho (भावना के भोजपत्रों पर ओशो), where page numbers are given:

Letter written on 9 Nov 1962, published in Krantibeej as #102 (edited) and later in BKBPO, p 172
Letter written on 12 Nov 1962, published in Krantibeej as #70 (edited) and later in BKBPO, p 173
Letter written on 12 Dec 1962, published in BKBPO, p 183
Letter written on 15 Dec 1962, published in Krantibeej as #77 (edited) and later in BKBPO, p 184
Letter written on 12 Jan 1963 am, to Manubhai Desai
Letter written on 4 Feb 1963, published in BKBPO, p 197
Letter written on 19 Feb 1963, published in Krantibeej as #76 (edited) and later in BKBPO, p 200-201
Letter written on 12 Mar 1963 pm, published in Krantibeej as #59 (edited) and later in BKBPO, p 207
Letter written on 18 Mar 1963, published in Krantibeej as #25 (edited) and later in BKBPO, p 208
to be continued