Devta Murtiprakaranam tatha Rupmandanam

Author(s): Upendramohan Sankhyatirtha
Publisher: Metropolitan Printing and Publishing House Limited

Page 17

2. SOURCES OF THE DEVATĀMŪRTI-PRAKARAŅAM. For compiling his DmP. Sūtradhāra Mandana seems either to have chiefly utilised the South Indian texts, or to have actually based his work on them.
Indeed his DmP. is more S. Indian than N. Indian in character. This would at once show that, most probably, the art of temple-architecture was already slowly dying in the North India, while in the South it lived with virility.
Naturally, for preparing his DmP. Mandana turned chiefly to South Indian sources. Another striking peculiarity is that he never utilised, as far as is evident, the Tamil Saiva or Vaişņava Agamas. But he made copious use of the silparatnam 16 and the Mayamatami? both probably from original Malayalam sources.
For some reasons, not evident, the S. Indian Agamas were not accessible to Mandana. Either Skt. texts in the Tamil script, often with copious glosses in vernacular, were not intelligible to Mandana ; or the lines of communication between Rajputana and the Tamil lands were beset with obstacles. The latter eventuality is all the more plausible, when we take into account, the unsettled political conditions of the times.
Repeated invasions and onslaughts of the fierce Turks and · Mongols interrupted the normal course of events in Northern,
Eastern and Central India. And, the warriors' swords were more in requisition then than the painters' brushes or the stone-masons' lines and pellets.
16. Kilparatnam of Srikumāra. Part I. Edited by Mm. T. Ganapati Šāstri, 1922 ; Ditto. Part II. Edited by K. Šāmbaśiva Šāstrī, 1929.
17. Mayamatam of Mayamuni. Edited by Mm. T. Ganapati Šāstrī, 1919.