The Development of Hindu Iconography c13.71.2

c13.71.2

'An oft-quoted saying of Polyclitus is to this effect that, 'successful attainment in art is the result of minute accuracy in a multitude of arithmetical proportions.........' Polyclitus not only published his theory of sculpture in a work called 'The Canon,' but also having taught in that treatise all the proportions of the body, carried his theory into practice by constructing a statue according to the prescriptions in the treatise.'¹ That is the attitude of the compilers of these Indian iconographic and iconometric texts, which is summed up in a very characteristic manner by the author of the *Śukranītisāra*. He writes: 'That image is called beautiful which is neither in excess of correct proportions nor short of them...... The limbs of those images which have been praised by sages (i.e., experts in iconography) never exceed or fall short of the correct proportions and thus are to be regarded as beautiful. All the limbs that are neither too fat nor too lean are pleasing from all points of view. One in one hundred thousand images is excellent in all its parts; so that image which is so according to the śāstric proportions is really beautiful, others are not. Those images which go against the above are not good to the sages.'² In this view of the case, Rao's statement about the 'Handicap of the artist' and about his 'losing freedom of action' requires modification. The icons no doubt became to a certain extent stereotyped;