Devta Murtiprakaranam tatha Rupmandanam

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

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The Buddha-pratimā-lakṣaṇam is preserved also in a Chinese version.58 We thus have three versions of this Silpa textthe original Sanskrit, the Tibetan and the Chinese Translations, for comparison.
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But the Jainas preceded the Buddhists in the adoption of iconolatrous cult. Very probably, the artistic study, for representation, of the undraped human body, originated with the Nirgrantha and the Ajivika ascetics, who went about naked and had daily chances for observing the natural bodily forms, in course of their ascetic practices 59 Indeed, the Jainas contributed, from early times, very considerably to the development of the plastic and the graphic arts of India. 60
Though the Buddhists as well as the Jainas have made important contributions to art the Brahmanic art traditions--as contained in the Silpa-sastras, are perhaps much earlier.
The Vastu-sastras and its subsidiary branch the Silpa-sāstras have been generally included into one of the Upavedasthe Artha-sastra, by Madhusudana Sarasvati :
to prepare for my personal use a Nagari transcription of this important Text and its Ceylonese Commentary.
This learned monk has also undertaken to transcribe in Nagari, for my use, the two remaining chapters of the Sariputra, as also the Rūpāvalī. I am preparing to publish critical editions of these important Texts of Buddhistic Art in near future.
58. See Haridas Mitra: Op. cit., Appendix: Tsao-siang-tou-leang
king.
59a. See Berthold Laufer: Op. cit., Einleitung. Seit 8 und Seit 17.
59b. The present writer, owes it to the kindness of the learned Muni Jina-vijayaji, the information regarding the existence of a single Jaina Silpa Canon. It is in a fragmentary state of preservation and in MS. The Authorship of the Work is ascribed to Thakkar Ph F)eru.
60. Full discussions of these questions have been given in my Contributions to the study of) Indian Iconometry, in course of publication.
61. Madhusudana Sarasvati: Prasthana-bheda. (Ed., T. Subraya Sastri, Mangalore).