Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v2.c77.78

v2.c77.78

Let us now proceed with colours. Our text does not give any detailed information about colours. Viṣṇudharmottara, the most representative treatise on painting, gives two sets of colour-varieties (vide Chapters 27 and 40). The first set consists of five primary colours—red, white, yellow, black and green and the second one white, yellow, black, blue and colour of the myrobalan. Bharata-Nāṭyaśāstra's classification of five primary colours tallies with the former set of Viṣṇudharmottra. Śilparatna, a latter treatise of great repute, mentions white, red, yellow, soot and śyāma (dark, blue or black) as primary colours. "The Abhilaṣitārtha-cintāmaṇi (cf. Mānasollāsa) knows as pure colours, white made of conch shell, red (prepared from red lead or from alaktaka juice, i.e. lac or from red chalk—gairika) green-brown (haritāla), i.e. sulphurated arsenic, and black from kajjvala (soot, used eye-black).