The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.385

v1.c7.385

The third belongs to the Library of the Asiatic Society (No. 629). In some places it bears the special title of *Aparājita-pṛcchā*, in other *Jñāna-ratnakoṣa*. Like the preceding two, it is written in the Tāntric style; but the narrator, instead of being Śiva, is Viśvakarmā. It comprises thirty-five Sūtras, some of which are evidently quotations from other works. It treats of architecture and sculpture, but in a very desultory and imperfect way. None of these works, however, has yet been analysed and reported upon, and there is so little before the public besides the details, meagre at best, in the essay of Rām Rāz on Indian architecture, that it would be quite unsafe to arrive at anything like a definite conclusion on the question. The Tanjore MSS. above referred to have been received through the kindness of Mr. A. C. Burnell of the Madras Civil Service, and I have obtained two others ⁵⁴ from Northern India. The South Indian treatises abound in Kanarese and Tamil words, and both the northern and the southern codices are full of technical terms, all but perfectly unintelligible to me. The MSS. procured by Rām Rāz were equally puzzling. Describing them he says: "Mutilated as they invariably are in many important parts, almost every line of them is not only disfigured by gross errors, perpetuated by a succession of ignorant transcribers; but the technical terms and memorial verses with which the whole abounds are so little understood either by the artists or the *paṇḍits* of the present day that it requires no ordinary exertion to comprehend and explain the exact import of even a single section.”⁵⁵ In Bengal there are no artists who have any knowledge of the subject, nor any *paṇḍit* who is acquainted with more than the name of the *Śilpa Śāstra*, and unaided by practical knowledge the subject would require a much deeper and a more thorough study than what I can at present afford, to ensure anything like a reliable and useful summary. A few extracts from some of the works to illustrate particular topics will be given lower down.