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Representations of joyous scenes and religious images are proper. . . . Battle scenes and images of death and misfortune should not appear there nor representations of combat between gods and demons, neither pictures of naked mendicants, of the love play of ascetics nor of suffering people.10 |
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Vastu and Artistic Freedom |
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This huge compendium of guidelines, however, never restricted the talent of an architect. Vastu sastras served to insure the proper proportion and rhythm of all buildings and built forms. Any analysis of India's ancient temples and palaces that were designed according to vastu reveals remarkable architectural freedom and artistry. Unlike Western treatises on architecture, the original Sanskrit books of vastu sastras didn't have any architectural drawings that would suggest that an architect had to follow a specific design as per an accompanying illustration. My teacher Sudesh points out that drawings were added to the English translations. |
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Sudesh also insists that the great vastu texts, such as the Manasara or the Mayamata, assumed that change would occur in architecture along with an individual's growth in personal awareness and society's advancement in technology. ''An architect was supposed to be creative," insists Sudesh. "That's why no two Indian temples are exactly alike. The sastras are not a noose around your neck. They're words that help you fly." |
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To understand vastu, we must understand the Vedic theory of the composition of the universe. To create the universe, the Spiritual Creative Force (Brahman) assumed the manifested form of Lord Brahma, the Creator, who |
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10 Kapila Vatsyayan, general ed. and Bruno Dagens, trans., Mayarmata, Vol. I (Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in association with Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1994). |
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