Thanks for sharing sir - with due respects to the author and the artist - to answer your foot note "
‘சில்பி’யின் *ஓவியங்களை மட்டும்* நீங்கள் பார்த்திருந்தால், அந்தச் சிற்பங்கள் யாவரைப் பற்றி என்று புரிந்து கொண்டிருப்பீர்களா?" - there are many who have written exhaustively about our sculptural treasures - sadly more in english - be it Sri Ananda Coomarasamy, Sri C. Sivaramamurthy , Sri S. R. Balasubramaniam - they all extensively utilised photographs to illustrate their works - but the impact of the sketches of Sri Silpi is truly divine. People are still thirsting for this series for his art and personally the text accompanying these cannot be compared to his art - I am sure there are die hard fans for the author and his works of fiction but when it comes to this series in particular - i think the artist won hands down
Perhaps the idea behind my question was not clear. It was not meant as a 'competition' or 'comparision' between Devan and Silpi's contribution! After all, Devan wrote it 'nicely' based completely on the notes gathered by Silpi! So , of course, the main credit goes to Silpi! But ...my point is: if you just have only the pictures , it would not lead to a full appreciation of the sculpture! One needs, I think, the explanation to understand the full significance of the sculpture...regardless of who gathered the notes for the text and who wrote it! Of course, more can be written and might have been written about such sculptures....and perhaps even mistakes in Silpi's notes can be corrected...and better artistic explanations canbe given!perhaps these have been done...in English ! But , I think, that at the period in which the seriescame ( 48 onwards) , there were not such accessible explanations.... At least for me, I would not have enjoyed many of the sculptures without the accompanying explanations! e.g. I would not have even known that it was Karna or Arjuna in the two sculptures!