So if I'm understanding this correctly, it is a way to cleverly package 6 books as one unit so that there are six different ways to open the package, each way giving you access to a different one of the six books.
Is there any advantage in this method for the reader over the usual method of simply printing all 6 books in one normal volume, with something between each adjacent pair so you can quickly open it to the book you are interested in? Or is this just one of those "do it because it is cool" things?
i think the only advantage is that binding books back then was expensive as hell... so maybe this crazy 6-way binding could have cost 2x or 3x and it would still be cheaper then paying the normal 6x.
not to mention you save the weight of extra 10 front and back covers.
now, why they didn't simply make the 6 volumes in the same book and put some tabs protruding from the pages, i will never know. there is a russian book binder faux anecdote there...
Hard to say what the intent of the people that made this was, but even if it's not terribly useful, it's pretty clever. Maybe they would use it to bind 6 volumes of a series together?
What I find most fascinating about things like that is that when you look at the pictures of the book you see an old, shriveled up, bent, corroded, bland, demure type of book; but I am sure that when this book was new it was an object of perfection.
It's kind of like how when we look at old pictures of "olden times" there is a certain perception or assumption about things and way of life because you are looking at images that are black and white and washed out and people have that corpse look to them simply due to the nature of the technology. Reality was quite different though, in reality that world that we think of as being black and white and populated with corpse looking people was more or less just as colorful as the world you and I live in.
I don't even know if it would be possible with this artifact, but I am sure you could assemble some master book binders and maybe some metallurgists or blacksmiths in order to painstakingly reconstruct the book using the same techniques and materials, yet without the possible exponentially more experienced skill level of the original master artisan.
The old masters or centuries ago, the men and women that created things by hand and skill that had been passed down for generations and which have largely been lost with industrialization have my utter most respect and reverence.
Indeed, Venkatadhvari's 17th century Sanskrit work Raghava Yadaveeyam narrates the story of Ramayana (left-to-right) and Mahabharata (right-to-left) simultaneously.
there have been a number of simple examples in modern times -- poems that cycle through a pessimistic statement, a statement like "we will never see the day when", and an optimistic statement, and end with the line "now read from bottom to top" (which makes the middle line negate the pessimistic statement instead of the optimistic one.)
I always found those super tacky. I wonder if it'll get posted on Hacker News in the year 5015 as an example of brilliant 21st century poetry. I also wonder if Venkatadhvari's contemporaries found him to be tacky.
Is there any advantage in this method for the reader over the usual method of simply printing all 6 books in one normal volume, with something between each adjacent pair so you can quickly open it to the book you are interested in? Or is this just one of those "do it because it is cool" things?