Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus c4.17

c4.17

The exact age of each of these treatises it is very difficult to ascertain. Tradition gives to most of them an antiquity altogether extravagant; and however diligent the endeavour to obtain authentic information on this point, success can hardly be expected to attend it, when we consider in what obscurity and oblivion the ancient history and chronology of the Hindús are involved. Of *Mánasára*,[^asterisk] the sage to whom the first treatise is attributed, I have not been able to procure any distinct historical notice, but, as has already been mentioned, the supposed authors of the other treatises, entitled *Cásyapa* and *Máyámata*, are, under these names, greatly celebrated in the *Puránas* and other sacred writings of antiquity. That all these treatises were composed in the South of India, there appears indeed no reason to doubt, for they seem to have been the standards by which the existing religious structures were reared throughout this part of the peninsula.