Manasara Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Manasara-Shilpashastra; III. Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Manasara: Translation; V. Architecture of Manasara: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v6.c41.s25.65

v6.c41.s25.65

This long list of existing pillars, when compared with the shorter one, comprising less than a dozen examples where certain similarity with the Persian type is possible, makes it all the more difficult to believe in the Persian theory so far as the Indian pillars are concerned. Moreover, there is another consideration, and that is, in a matter like the present one, perhaps more significant. Only the general principles and practicable rules and regulations for the guidance of artists are codified in standard treatises dealing with a subject like architecture. If any similarity can be clearly detected in the standard treatises of different countries, deficiency, due to the lack of sufficient archaeological remains, can be rectified. But so far as Persia is concerned there appears to have been no such treatise ever written. All that has been recorded in Persia are from the reports of foreign visitors, entirely based on their observation of the scanty remains. In India, fortunately, we possess in manuscripts many hundred *Śilpa-śāstras* dealing with architecture and the cognate arts in great detail. But the standard work, *Mānasāra*, was not accessible to scholars in text or translation until the publication of the writer's seven volumes including a dictionary, an illustrated encyclopaedia, and a number of measured drawings. It is needless to repeat what has been stated in these books. It is possible that, from the details gathered together in these books, readers may expect with greater reason a similarity between the Indian and the Greco-Roman orders rather than the Persian columns. Merely the conclusion may be reiterated here: ‘The striking similarities in the names of the mouldings, like *padma* or cyma, *hāra* or bead, or in the names of orders like the *Miśrita* or Composite, may sometimes be attributed to inexplicable coincidence. But in view of other striking similarities between Vitruvius and the *Mānasāra*, such as the classification of orders into exactly five, and the divisions of subservient parts called mouldings, common to all the orders, into eight, and also the proportionate measurement varying equally from six to ten diameters, and tapering almost in the same way, there seem to have been something more substantial than mere coincidence. An influence, direct or indirect, of the one upon the other, seems highly probable.’¹