About Mansarovar Sahitya
A reading archive for Indian poetry, kept in the languages it was written in
Mansarovar Sahitya collects the classical and modern poetry of the subcontinent and publishes it the way it deserves to be read — original script, faithful transliteration, honest gloss, and a note saying where the text came from. It is a library, a magazine and a set of reading circles, run for readers rather than for traffic.
मानसरोवर साहित्य भारतीय भाषाओं की शास्त्रीय और आधुनिक कविता को उसकी अपनी लिपि में सुरक्षित रखता है — पाठ, लिप्यन्तरण, अर्थ और स्रोत, चारों के साथ।
The text first
Every poem is published in its own script — Devanagari, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Gurmukhi, Odia and the rest — with a Roman transliteration for readers who need one and a plain English gloss underneath. Where manuscripts disagree we say so rather than quietly choosing.
Public domain, properly cited
The classical archive runs from the first century to the eighteenth, and all of it is out of copyright. Each page carries a source note and a ready-made citation in MLA 9, Chicago 17 and Devanagari form, so students can quote from it without guessing.
Living writers, with permission
Modern work appears only with the writer’s consent or, where the writer has died, the family’s. Contributors keep their copyright; we ask for the right to publish and to keep the piece in the archive. Anything can be withdrawn on request.
Read together
Nine circles meet every month to read aloud — Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Patna, and one online for members abroad. Recitation is not decoration here; most of this poetry was composed to be sung.
Edited, not automated
Every submission is read by an editor before it is published, and every correction a reader sends is checked against the manuscript. It is slower than it could be, and that is the point.
Free to read, funded by members
The archive costs nothing to use and carries no advertising. Membership — by application, paid by UPI after approval — pays for digitisation, transcription and the recordings.
How to take part
Read it, correct it, add to it
Reading needs no account. If you spot a wrong line, there is a correction link on every poem. If you write, send us the work — in any Indian language, in English, or in translation. If you want the archive to grow faster, become a member.