In the late Yajurvaidika upaniat, the vetvatara, which is the foundational text of t

he aiva-sana, the god Rudra is described thus:

na tasya pratim asti yasya nma mahad yaa
There is no one who his equal, whose name [itself] is great fame.
This sentence has also been taken to organically imply something else among Hind
us too: Statues are not made of the great people their name itself is great fame
. Keeping with this we mostly do not have statues of many of the great figures o
f Hindu tradition. For instance, we do not know how Bodhyana or pastamba or valyana o
r Paippalda looked, though we take their names on a daily basis. So also with gre
at men even closer to our times, like say Vcaspati Mir. Now, speaking of other hero
es, like Rma Aikvkava, whose name might be almost taken daily in some of our househ
olds, we have some kind of a description in the opening of the Rmyaa:
ikvku-vaa-prabhavo rmo nma janai ruta |
niyattm mahvryo dyutimn dhtimn va ||
Born in the Ikvku clan, he is known among men by the name of Rma. He is self-contro
lled, of great manliness, radiant, resolute, and has his senses under control.
buddhimn ntimn vgm rm atru-nibarhaa |
vipulso mahbhu kambugrvo mahhanu ||
He is intelligent, politically astute, eloquent, opulent, and an extirpator of f
oes. He is broad-shouldered, of mighty arms, with a conch-like neck, and strong-
jawed.
mahorasko mahevso ghajatrur aridama |
jnubhu suir sulala suvikrama ||
His chest is broad, he is a great archer, his collar-bones are well-concealed, a
nd is a suppressor of foes. With arms reaching up to his knees, with a good head
, shapely forehead and good gait.
sama sama-vibhaktga snigdha-vara pratpavn |
pnavak vilko lakmv ubha-lakaa || 1.1.8-11
His body is well-proportioned, he is of smooth complexion and mighty. His chest
is rounded, his eyes large, he is prosperous and with auspicious marks.
Similar accounts might be found elsewhere in the Rmyaa too. One thing which comes o
ut of this account is that it is fairly generic for a mighty katriya except for o
ne specific, unusual feature namely jnubhu i.e. that his arms reached down to his k
s, which might have been a peculiar characteristic of the man himself. Thus, whi
le one can build a generic image of emperor Rma as a mighty katriya, we can still
say we do not know how he *exactly* looked. Now, this is in part keeping with a
the broader issue we have discussed earlier, namely the iconic depictions of dei
ties among the early Hindus. As we argued before such existed but were not promi
nent and were perhaps primitive keeping with the archaeological evidence from seve
ral early Indian sites. In this sense the Indian iconography mirrored the primit
ivism of the early Greek iconography.
This is in stark contrast to Egypt where their great Pharaohs are known more fro
m their portraits rather than epic narratives. When we see the images of the lor
dly Pharaohs, while stylized, there is clearly an element of individuality behin
d them. Over the ages of its heathen existence, in addition to statues, Egypt de
veloped an even more realistic portraiture in other media. It is conceivable tha
t this Egyptian tradition of portraiture spread through West Asia and then Europ
e influencing other cultures, first Semitic and then Indo-European. Thus, we see
 it emerge first among the Hittites to some extent and then eventually among the
yavana-s (here collectively Greek and Macedonian) and romka-s. Thus, by the time
of the Macedonian invasion of India we we see a vigorous tradition of realistic
royal portraiture on their coins, medallions and mosaic work that has moved far
away from their ancestral primitivism. Early Indian coinage was abundant in sym
bolism an