South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c6.13

c6.13

Some scholars⁴ have looked upon Agastya as a mythical personage and regard the legend of Agastya’s settlement in the South as historically worthless. Evidences are sufficient however which show that he actually lived in the South about the time of Rāma’s journey to the South. Rāma himself visited his hermitage as also that of his brothers, which was 2 *jojanas* from Panchabati (*vide* Rāmāyana, Aranya Kānda, II, 37). In Tanjore taluk, five miles north of Point Calimere, there is a small village called Agastya *palli* adjoining Vedaranniyam, ‘the forest of the Vedas’. This village is remarkable as possessing a temple dedicated to the sage Agastya. A grant of a *Bramha-deya* land given in the 16th year of the reign of king Parantaka, a Pandyan king (Birnarayan) begins with an account of the Pandya family which he describes “as praised personally by *Rishis* like Varadwaj and had the sage Agastya for its priest”². There is also a legendary account of Ugra Pandya son of Thathathakei having gone accompanied by a Chola and a Chera prince to seek assistance from the sage Agastya. Mr. V. Kanakasabhai Pillai in his work alludes to the existence in the second century A.D. of a practice of the Brahmans of Southern India to circum-bulate the Pothiya hill, a peak of the Tinnevelly ghats which was famous as the residence of the Vedic Sage Agastya; and he is still thought of as living there. Of his literary works, *Smriti Chandrikā*, *Agastya Sanhitā* and *Agastya Gitā* are well known. The work on *Silpasastra* attributed to him is perhaps the least known of his works. The *Agastiya Sakalādhikāra* has a special signification with reference to the art of South India, as suggesting the development of Dravidian art under Aryan influence. He seems to be the first author to systematise the practice of image-making in South India and the rules of proportions laid down in his work are practically the same as elaborated in the later works on South Indian sculpture, such as the *Kāsyapiya*, *Sāraswatiya*, *Anghsumānaveda-Kalpa*, etc., and are still followed by modern South Indian *Sthapathis* (sculptors). Agastya’s æsthetic leanings are very well indicated in the legendary account of the creation of his wife Lopa Mudrā, whose beauteous form he deduced and evolved from the many beauteous objects of nature, his wife being so named, as her beauty had vanquished or ‘caused to disappear’ (Sans. *Lopa*) all the other beauties of her time. Agastya’s work *Sakalādhikāra* (Lit., the authority or proficiency in image-making)⁴ exists in only one manuscript in the Tanjore Palace Estate Library being incorporated in the collection of leaves tabulated as *Silpakalādipikā* by Bendall in his catalogue. Except in the colophons there is nothing in the body of the eleven chapters of *Sakalādhikara* which indicates the authorship of the work. The matters dealt with in the book are as follows :—