Devta Murtiprakaranam tatha Rupmandanam

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

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Of the eighteen or nineteen Maha-purānas, besides the other Upa-puranas, some nine have special reference to architecture and sculpture etc. Most of the Puranas are Vaisnava and as many as fourteen of them are devoted to the worship of Visnu; but they deal with the images of all the three deities, Trimurti, forming the Triad.
1. The Agni-purana has sixteen chapters on Vastu and Silpa -one of them on town-planning, two on residential buildings and thirteen on sculpture.
2. The Garuda-purana has two chapters on architecture and two on sculpture.
3. The Naradiya-purana treats only the construction of temples, reservoirs, wells and tanks in its one chapter.
4. The Brahmaṇḍa-purāna, likewise, treats the construction of temples and other buildings in its one chapter.
5. The Bhavisya-purana has four chapters, three being devoted to sculpture and one on the architecture of temples.
6. The Matsya-purana has eight comprehensive chapters dealing in great detail with architecture and sculpture, constituting
M. Winternitz: A. History of Ind. Lit. Vol. I. Section II; especially, pp. 517-586.
About the Silpa sections of the Purāņas, see :
P. K. Acharya: Ind. Arch. I. General Survey. III. The Epics. V. The Age of Manasara; and also A Dictionary of Hindu Archit. Appendix II.; N. Law: Varta-the Hindu Economics, Ind. Antiq.,
Vol. XLVII.
:
79. For full lists of the Puranas and the Upa-Puranas: see M. MonierWilliams Indian Wisdom (1893, Lond), chapt. XV.-ff. Puranas; and see, especially-about eighteen Puranas, pp. 513-14 and about eighteen UpaPuranas, p. 521. Also, M. Winternitz: Op. cit., p. 532-33.
"But the Matsya-Purana mentions only four Upa-Purāņas. The Brahma-vaivarta-P., without enumerating them, says that eighteen Upa-P. exist. The Kurma-P. enumerates them."