Book Title: Devta Murtiprakaranam tatha Rupmandanam
Author(s): Upendramohan Sankhyatirtha
Publisher: Metropolitan Printing and Publishing House Limited
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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
Ì 28 j
the Vastu-prakarana i. e., the section on Architecture. In one of these chapters, accounts are given of the eighteen Vastusastropadesakas, ancient masters of architecture. One chapter is devoted to columns, two to buildings, one to building-materials. Three chapters are exclusively devoted to sculpture-one being on Talamana, iconometry and two others on the Phallus.
7. The Linga-purana has a single chapter on sacrificial pits, temples and the installation of deities.
8. The Vayu-purana has a single chapter about building temples on mountains.
9. The Skanda-purana has three chapters on Vastu and Silpa. One chapter describes how for his daughter's marriage Himalaya had a pavillion constructed by Viśvakarman under the instruction of his Purohita Gargācārya and how clever portraits or life-like representations of all gods were made therein, and they struck even the gods themselves with awe and wonder. Another chapter describes the laying out by Viśvakarman himself, of a large city Mahinagara. From another chapter, we come to know how a golden hall was made by Padmanidhi, at the command of Indradyumna, how Viśvakarman made three chariots at the command of Narada and how their installation ceremony was performed by this rṣi.
For informations regarding Vastu, Silpa and Citra the most important Pauranik sources are the Agni, the Matsya and the Visnudharmottaram.
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"The Matsya or Matsya-Puranaa°
is one of the older works of the Purāņa literature, or at least one of those which have preserved most of the ancient text, and do fair justice to the definition of a 'Purana.' It commences with the story of the great flood out of which Visņu, in the form of a fish (Matsya) saves only Manu. While the ship in which Manu is sailing
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80. The Matsya-Purana is published in Anandāśram Sanskrit Series No. 54 and transl. into Engl., in SBH. (Panini office, Allahabad) Vol. 17. See M. Winternitz: A Hist. of Ind. Lit. Vol. I, pp. 575-76.
