Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v2.c78.s2.6

v2.c78.s2.6

**Epics.**—In the Rāmāyaṇa, no description of a palace or lofty superstructure of vimāna, saudha or prāsāda is complete without reference to the pictorial decoration. Pictorial halls are a familiar paraphernalia of a palace establishment. In the Mahābhārata also these references abound (cf. one hundred, etc. Coomaraswamy). A Tibetan historian in the seventeenth century of the name of Tārānāth, in a summary account of Indian Buddhist art from the earliest times to the author’s day, ascribes a great antiquity to all the crafts of India, ‘dating even from the remote age prior to the disappearance of the Teacher (480 B.C.). He specially alludes to the superlative excellence of the earliest wall paintings, which he attributes to the gods. This work was subsequently carried on by the ‘Yakṣas’ (puṇya-Yanas), literally ‘the good people’, divinely inspired artists employed by Asoka (250 BC) and next by the semi-human Nāgas, under the control of Nāgarjuna (circa A. D. 200).