A Re-reading of the Sastras: Reconstructing a New Art History

Shastras are authoritative texts on specialized topics preserved from antiquity and are more like grammars of form, proportion, iconography and ritual.1 For many years art historians have explored various shilpa shastras to construct a textual oriented history of Indian art as a challenge to the criticisms by colonial scholarship. The colonial mind perceived shastra as a book very similar to Bible and studied it as material object which had intended meanings and connotations which cannot applicable to shastra.2 Shastras are bodies of knowledge, nevertheless, the former view became prominent in the study of shastras and it blinded scholars to analyse its other possibilities. This eventually led to the privileging of text over practice. This paper explores the possibilities for a re-reading of shastras to reconstruct Indian Art History and suggest new approaches to accomplish this task. The paper carries out a genealogical study to comprehend the privileging of shatsras in art history. Moreover it is a critique of the preoccupation with textuality, style and form in the study of art and architecture. This paper will deal with the works of scholars such as Samuel Parker, Joseph Mosteller, Adalbert Gail, Vaijayanti Shete, et al. to formulate a new perspective regarding the use of shastras in art making. The study concludes that apart from being assumed as prescriptive in nature, shastras can offer valuable insights into the socio-economic aspects of art making. Observations of actual practice reveal that Silpasastras play a marginal role in the technical production and helps in fabricating identity, authority, and respected social standing.
Pollock, Sheldon (1984): The Theory of Practice and The Practice of Theory in Indian Intellectual Tradition, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, American Oriental Society, U.S.A. pp 501519. This brilliant work expounds the relation between sastra and prayoga in Indian intellectual tradition and also delineates the multivalency of the definitions of the word sastra. 2 Samuel K. Parker; Text and Practice in South Asian Art: An Ethnographic Perspective; Artibus Asiae; Vol. 63, No. 1; 2003; pp 9-10.
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