The Development of Hindu Iconography c9.30.7

c9.30.7

In the Brāhmaṇa literature, again, “ many precise and elaborate details are given regarding the building of altars, generally fire-altars ” of various shapes; and it is noteworthy that the rules for the construction of these sacrificial altars, given in the Śulva Sūtras, make use of dynamic symmetry, of which no trace can be recognised at a later period.¹ But nowhere in such literature is to be found any reference, however slight, to the mode of construction of temples or shrines, which must have found some place if the images and temples had played some part in the sacrificial religion of the early Vedic Indo-Aryans. The supposed allusion to the processions of the images of Indra in Ṛgveda, I. 10, 1 and III. 53, 5-6, if carefully scrutinised, will be found to rest on no better data.