Silpa in Indian Tradition: Concept and Instrumentalities

The book attempts to examine certain basic conceptualizations about art (silpa), artists (silpi) and the canon (sastra), the three defining elements in traditional Indian sculptures.  It takes up issues concerning the valorization and devaluation of silpa, including its concordance with form (rupa), its secular domain and, for that reason, its vulnerability.  Using both textual and epigraphic sources, its section on artists and craftsmen of different order-Kokasa lineage of a millennium-long standing included-deals with the question of their historical antecedents, anonymity, organization, operations and activities, work culture, authority, discipline and dissent, pecuniary gains, and the patronage that made their work possible.  In the section on the canon (sastra), an attempt has been made to underscore their operational and aesthetic bearings in the works of art, within the framework of traditional Indian poetics and iconography.  The book also has an appendix on masons’ marks which serve as the silent assertions of ancient artists’ identity and have a presence from second century BCE to seventeenth century.