The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c13.s5.35

c13.s5.35

It is to be understood that *śilpaśāstras* are by all means treatises on aesthetics or rather applied aesthetics. They deal chiefly with the problem of form (*rūpam*). But in the present context we are interested in them exclusively as documents of exact science, mathematical measurements, calculations of proportions etc. bearing on Nature and man. It is as furnishing fresh evidences of Hindu command over the things of this earthly earth and of their preoccupation with non-transcendental, unmeta-physical and matter-of fact realities as well as the human world of daily secular interests that *śilpaśāstras* are being introduced as twins of the *vārttāśāstras*. Be it observed once more that none of the texts in manuscripts or print such as have been mentioned for the period from c. 600 to 1300 may belong to this period at all. But it is presumed that the *chitralakṣaṇa, pratimālakṣaṇa* (i.e. marks or characteristics of paintings, images etc.) were known during those centuries and earlier and of course the principles were practised by the painters, sculptors and architects.