South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c6.27

c6.27

Next to Kasyapa we come across the name of Maya as Maya. associated with South Indian art. He has also more or less a mythical halo about him, but there are various works on art attributed to him which chiefly deal with architecture. There is no doubt, however, that he established a new system of temple-construction of his own which was probably the origin of the Dravidian School of architecture. His principal work is known as *Mayamata* or principles or opinion of Maya. The existing manuscripts attributed to him and the legendary account of his life which we glean from the Rāmāyana leaves no doubt that his activities were confined to the South and the works supposed to be written by him are specially associated with South Indian art. The works attributed to him are now known and referred to under the following names :—(a) *Mayamata* or *Mayamata Bāstu Sāstra*; (b) *Maya Silpa*; (c) *Maya silpa satikā* (d) *Silpa sāstra Bidhānam*. Of these the last work which is in five chapters is supposed to be a portion of the original *Mayamata* and deals exclusively with construction of images. The other works chiefly deal with the architecture of temples, etc. In the *purānas*, Maya, sometimes also called Maya Dānaba, is described as the son of Diti, the mother of the *Daityas* or Demons, the other sister, Aditi being the mother of the gods; and Maya is reputed to be the architect and craftsman of the *Daityas*, just as Visva-Karmā was the architect of the gods. Ram Raja considers that he is the same person as the author or the compiler of the Surya Siddhanta. Of his many artistic exploits the Mahabharata mentions a splendid palace erected by him for the residence of the five sons of Pandu, a poetical description of which occupies a whole chapter of that great epic. In the Rāmāyaṇa he is also described as having built a palace of art for himself to beguile the tedium of the absence of his wife Homa. His daughter Mandodari was married by him to Ravāṇa. In the *Kathā Saritsāgar* he is described as an *Asura* or a non-Aryan who subsequently became a convert to Aryan civilization; by so doing he incurred the displeasure of his former clan and to protect himself from the onslaughts of the latter he built for himself an invulnerable castle in the Vindhya hills¹. It is very difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the time when Maya lived or the date of the works attributed to him. Having regard to the nature of their contents they seem to be later than the works attributed to Agastya. Maya's source of knowledge of the *silpaśāstras*, the science of the arts, is stated in a legendary account given in the Rāmāyaṇa (Kiskindya kanda, 51 Sarga) to have been derived from Sukrāchārya through the grace of Bramhā. At any rate he was a later exponent of the arts than his Aryan predecessors Agastya and Kasyapa.