New Book Project

I'm pleased to announce that I have concluded negotiations with Columbia University Press, and can proceed with a project I have been thinking about for a long time. At the heart of it will be this article:

Kasulis, Thomas P. ‘Reference and Symbol in Plato’s Cratylus and Kūkai’s Shōjijissōgi’ Philosophy East & West, Vol. 32, 1982.

I will be reprint the article courtesy of the University of Hawai'i Press. It will be accompanied by translations of both the Cratylus dialogue (an out of copyright edition); and Kūkai's Shōji jissō gi (声字実相義), in Yoshito Hakeda's translation courtesy of CUP. I've asked Dr Margaret Magnus, author of Gods of the Word and The Magic Letter Page, to write an introduction to Plato and Sound Symbolism. I will write an introduction to Kūkai and the Shōji jissō gi.

This brings together several strands of interest for me, but especially helps to make the link between sound symbolism, especially Margaret's work on phonosemantics, and Buddhist mantra. I hope to publish this as the 4th offering from Visible Mantra Books sometime in late 2011.

I've approached another author about an existing unpublished manuscript on Buddhist mantra, and hope that it will be our 5th book sometime in 2012. I'm trying to encourage friends of mine to produce a book of audible mantras - i.e. to notate the tunes we use for mantras in the Triratna Community.