Talk:Bikhare Phool (बिखरे फूल)

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Main source of the factual info for this book is Neeten's Osho Source Book. Specifically, the book info is from his Bibliography page and the manuscript info from that section of his Appendix page.

Images are from Osho's brother Shailendra, and add an intriguing element to the search. The cover image is not actually dated, nor does the publisher seem to be Jeevan Jagriti Kendra, the "default" Osho publisher of the day. What it is is somewhat hard to decipher due to a slight blurriness in that part of the image but best try is:

publisher: Kasturalal Gandhi, Youthforce Bombay c/o unreadable, Empire Building, Dadabhai Naoroji Road, Bombay-1
printer: unreadable Bombay-26

The absence of a date is the other conundrum here. I first dealt with all this by calling it JJK anyway and placing it in with the first edition we had any info about, the 1969 edition, but the case for keeping it out of JJK's tent and placing it even earlier began to seem more compelling, so that's where it stands now.

The basis for placing it so early and going with this never-heard-of Youthforce is the quite primitive appearance, lack of the "usual" pub details and the advertisement on the back page, of all things. Even in the late 60s, Osho's sahitya generally had higher production values than this. And really, JJK's name is nowhere to be found; it's not easy to overlook that.

The other clue we have about the date is a page mistakenly sent as a "Contents" page, image right, which turns out to be a books list of available books still in print. They are all quite old and cheap, as befits the era, and perhaps a close look at them will help narrow down a date. But that's a back-burner project.

There remain some small curiosities on the front cover. Under Osho's name (as Acharya Shri Rajneesh) is the phrase वैचारिक क्रांति, meaning roughly "conceptual revolution". We will not get into a metaphysical argument here but note that this phrase is highly unusual, and may be another indication of the "outside-normal-channels" nature of this book. It is not out of the question that this phrase is intended as a subtitle, but the overall layout suggests otherwise. -- doofus-9 03:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)


And now a day of seeing my errors. Perhaps these will be the last, at least for today: They have come to light seeing another cover. For what it doesn't matter for now, but it is another booklet of the vintage we have been considering with this Bikhare Phul cover, complete with the same ad on the back cover. And the bottom is not blurry, so we can retrieve the missing info from that, as it appears to be similar.

And whaddya know?!?!?! The first "unreadable", as in "publisher: Kasturalal Gandhi, Youthforce Bombay c/o unreadable" turns out to be none other than Jeevan Jagriti Kendra. So much for much of the above. And the printer is A. N. Dhar Dvivedi, Raashtrabhaasha Press, Bombay 26 fwiw.

And we can also revisit the left side of the bottom of the front cover (the right half). Down there was something that was so unreadable as preclude even speculation. Perhaps that spared me some troubles. Anyway, the readable new cover here suggests something: It appears to say "Pr. San. May' 71 : 2000", and below, "40 paise". The blurry counterpart in Bikhare Phul can now be speculated as another date, 2000 and price: "[different initials] January' 70 : 2000, 25 paise".

Leaving aside the initials, they do look rather like dates (with a misplaced apostrophe) and a print run of 2000. So for now, throwing this cover back in with JJK, forget about "Youth Force Bombay", as part of its three print runs for the 1969 edition.

One last happy addition is that the squiggles in the bottom right of the front cover have been (partially) deciphered as a compilation credit, for "Pushpa", who is none other than Ma Dharm Jyoti. So there ya go. Stay tuned. -- doofus-9 16:10, 24 June 2017 (UTC)