Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v2.c77.240

v2.c77.240

**Patras,** in my opinion, in relation to Painting, are the delineations of the natural scenery, characteristic of a particular region. As flaura and Fanna of a particular country or region have different varieties of their own, naturally they carved out for themselves a style of their own. In painter's art delineations of nature both in the background as well as in the forefront making it conspicuous for the sake of suggestions, have formed a tradition in the literature and an important convention in the technique. As paintings are manifold—landscape, portraits, both divine and human, the images of beasts and birds, the symbolic representations of the sun, moon, the sky, the clouds, etc., etc.,—some technique has to be evolved out, to present all this in a picture of limited size, with limited resources. These patras, though literarlly mean 'leaves', have some symbolic and suggestive implication having a wider denotation and connotation both. It is from this angle that this treatise, Aparājita-pracchā, in its Sūtra No. 227, has taken up this theme.