Dr. Freund and PhD student Vivek Vaidyanath discovered the only copy of Varna Shiksha, while searching though photographs of palm leaves obtained from a library in Mysore, India.

MUM faculty member revives ancient Vedic text
by Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA, The Review
7 December 2015

Following his discovery of a lost Vedic text, Maharishi University of Management faculty member Peter Freund has published a translation of the Varna Shiksha along with commentary.

Titled Varna Shiksha: The Qualities, Colors, Genders, and Devatas of the Letters of the Sanskrit Alphabet, the book also includes a comprehensive understanding of Shiksha according to Maharishi Vedic Science, in which Shiksha is understood as the Vedic science of speech.

Dr. Freund describes how all the Sanskrit vowels and consonants arise out of the collapse of "A" to "ka," and then sequentially give rise to the Veda and the entire creation.

This book is the first and only translation of this text—and is the final stage of a series of events that began when Dr. Freund and PhD student Vivek Vaidyanath discovered the only copy of this text while searching though photographs of palm leaves, obtained from a library in Mysore, India.

Palm leaves were used like paper for writing down ancient Vedic texts. Varna Shiksha was found hidden in one bundle of palm leaves. Dr. Freund transcribed the text from an obscure script called Grantha into Sanskrit, and then translated the Sanskrit into English.

"Varna Shiksha is an amazing find because it is the only text that lists in detail the qualities of each of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet," said Richard Wolfson, who assists Dr. Freund.

The book is available at Amazon.com.

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