Book Progress

I've started posting images of Lansta script mantras on the Visible Mantra Facebook page as I create them for the book. As I am using a font for them I feel they are not proprietary and I'm happy to just give them away. The book follows the order of the website Mantras page which will give you an idea of where I'm up to.

Breakthrough

I've finally figured out that the CBETA Lantsa font is what has been causing technical difficulties with turning visiblemantra.org into a book. For some reason it breaks the pdf creator and leaves me unable to create the files I need to publish. So I'm now in the process of turning all those mantras and bījas into images.

It's been two years since I made the decision to create the book. Each mantra will have four scripts: Siddhaṃ, Tibetan, Lantsa, and Devanāgarī. I had been using fonts for Lantsa as the calligraphy is too difficult for me. I have created all new calligraphy for it, of much higher quality than what is on the website.

It will take a few months to create all the new images and reconfigure the book. But this is the first progress I've made for some time. There is now a good prospect of getting the book out next year. Once the book is finished I will need to bring the website up to the same standard though I imagine it will be a long process.

In the meantime if you are interested my Pilgrimage Diary is available via Lulu.com.

Missing Websites

The Mật Tông Vietnamese Esoteric Buddhism - website (mattong.wordpress.com) seems to have disappeared which is a shame. Although the main language was Vietnamese there were some very fine examples of Siddhaṃ and Lantsa caligraphy on the site.

Also the SiddhaṃKey site seems to have shrunk to almost nothing as well with only the front page and an image of the word Siddhaṃ left. I never used their Siddhaṃ keyboard as I don't like the CBETA font, but I did find the Lantsa keyboard useful.

cont...

I've been in touch with Khai who created both of these sites and he just says he removed them "for personal reasons". There is a possibility of having new sites so, hopefully

I've uploaded the CBETA Siddham font to my site. You can download it from there. It has some limitations and I don't personally use it, but it would be a shame if it disappeared completely. I note it has been used extensively on the Wikipedia Siddhaṃ page.