Page:Hindu Art - its Humanism and Modernism.djvu/33

 paints, canvas, pencil, tapestry, and picture-frames are referred to in Charu-datta, Clay Cart, Raghu-vamsha, Oottara-rama-charita and Kadambaree. All these references apply to mundane paintings. In Vasavadatta, again, Patalipootra (Patna) is described as a city of which the conspicuous objects are the statues, which adorn the white-washed houses.

It is almost a convention with the heroes and heroines of Hindu literature to speak of the faces of their beloved as "pictures fixed on the walls of the heart." This conceit occurs even in Krishnamishra's morality-play, Pra-bodha-chandrodaya (eleventh century).

In Soobandhu's romance the heroine Vasavadatta is seen by Kandarpaketu in a dream. She "was a picture, as it