Because the Chitrasutra survives embedded within the Vishnudharmottara Purana rather than as an independent text, questions about its date and composition are bound up with the larger, complex textual history of the Purana that contains it, a body of material scholars generally regard as compiled and expanded over an extended period rather than composed at a single moment, which makes assigning the Chitrasutra itself a precise date difficult with confidence.
Modern study of the Chitrasutra owes much to the critical edition and translation produced by the art historian Parul Dave Mukherji, whose work situates the text within both Sanskrit aesthetic theory and the wider history of Indian painting, and which remains the standard scholarly reference for readers approaching the treatise without direct access to the Sanskrit original. The Chitrasutra is frequently discussed alongside other Sanskrit aesthetic treatises addressing rasa, the theory of aesthetic emotion or flavor central to classical Indian art criticism, since its treatment of mood and expression in painting draws on concepts developed more fully in that wider theoretical literature.
Because the Vishnudharmottara Purana as a whole covers an unusually wide range of subjects beyond painting, including sections on statecraft, medicine and other technical arts alongside its religious content, the Chitrasutra's presence within it reflects a broader pattern in Puranic literature of gathering practical and technical knowledge inside a framework otherwise organized around religious narrative and instruction.