Devta Murtiprakaranam tatha Rupmandanam

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

Page 31

| 19 detail. The oldest saivagama extant the (Uttara) Kamikāgama is probably not older than the 5th or 6th century A. C.53.
We owe it entirely to (the religious zeal of) the Buddhists, the conservation, for posterity, of some silpa Texts—both Buddhistic and Brahmanical, and perhaps, even Jaina—a few of which are entirely lost in Sanskrit. Wonderfully accurate translations of the Sanskrit versions, for example, of the Works of Atreya and of Nagnajit, are preserved in the encyclopædic Tibetan compilation Bstan-hgyur.54 Dr. Berthold Laufer had brought out a critical edition of the Tibetan version of Citralaksanam55 ascribed to Nagnajit.
Of special importance are some of the original Sanskrit texts, procured from Nepal, mainly through the initiative of the present writer. And by him some of these have been published for the first time. Further information regarding Silpa works, preserved in Tibetan translation and procured in their original, have also been given, elsewhere, fully, by the present writer.56
Besides these, a few Śilpa Texts of purely Buddhistic nature, are preserved, in Ceylon. They are in corrupt Sanskrit surely probably Post-Buddhistic. The most important among them, is the Sāriputra57 ascribed to Sāriputra, a direct disciple of the Blessed One.
53. T. A. Gopinatha Rao : Elements of Hindu Iconography. Vol. I,
Part I, p. 55.
54. Cordier: Catalogue du Fonds Tibétain de la Bibliotheque Nationale. Bstan hgyur, Section. Mdo-hgrel Sutra-ortti, Commentary on the sūtras, classed under the general name Silpa-vidyā-śāstras, p. 474.
55. See Note 29, Supra.
56. Haridas Mitra : The Buddhapratimu-laksanam with the Commentary Vivarani. The Prince of Wales Sarasvati-bhavana Sanskrit Texts. No. 48. (Benares, 1933). See the Introduction.
57. Through the kind help of Bhadanta Manjusri, very obliging Buddhist Monk who is well grounded in Pali and Sanskrit, I was able