Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v2.c74.s2.13

v2.c74.s2.13

As the previous pages of this work maintain that the Iconography was intimately related to religion, and religious creeds and sects being many, the natural corrolary was that the different religious creeds both hetrodox and orthodox gave rise to different sets of icons and images. Furthermore we have also seen—vide the last chapter (Sources of Hindu Iconography)—that this religious upsurge is fully represented in the pages of the literary texts. Hence here in this chapter I shall try to give the classification of images in general and incidentally dwell at length on the variety of Hindu images of gods and goddesses as found not only in the sculptures, but in the canons of the Śāstras, so that this equipment may provide a connecting link between them in the next chapter in which the images as described in Samarāṅgaṇa-sūtradhāra and Aparājita-pracchā as well as other sources which have been taken notice of.