Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v2.c74.14

v2.c74.14

In India, the Art of Architecture, the Vāstu-Kalā, of which Iconography is an essential subject (vide 'the Scope and Subject of Architecture'—H. S. A. Vol. I and also Bh. V. S. Vol. I), is both mechanical and fine. A fine art presupposes the arousal of an aesthetic experience and aesthetic experience is based on the sentiments, the Rasas and Rasadṛṣṭis. According to Hindu view of Poetics and Dramatics as well as the science of Fine Arts, an aesthetic experience is not only a pleasure to the senses, it is not only toning up of heart and mind, it is something more, rather much more. It is elevating the soul. This is the spiritual background and it is in accordance with this fundamental tenet of aestheticity in India that writers on Aesthetics have likened an asthetic experience to the experience aroused in Brahma-Realization-‘Brahmānanda-svāda-sahodaraḥ’. Raja Bhoja, one of the greatest exponents of the asthetic school of Sanskrit Poetry and Drama (cf. his ‘Śṛṅgāra-Prakāśa’), has had the credit to introduce and, expound this side-branch of Iconography, the Rasa-citras. The treatment of the aestheticity in the sculptural and pictorial images (vide the S. S. ch. 82) is a unique distinction of the Samarāṅgaṇa-Sūtradhāra in the extant manuals of Vāstu-Sāstra. The author has, therefore, very briefly expounded this new element of Hindu Iconography, in a subsequent chapter.