It is in the Mauryan period that one witnesses the growth of sculptural art after an interregnum of more than a thousand years since the end of the Indus civilization which had a complete command over stone-cutting and sculpting. It is not known how the Indus tradition was passed on or whether the Mauryan period brought about a completely new phase of Indian stone-cutting. This uncertainty once impelled scholars to look for the genesis of Mauryan art in the Achaemenid imperial style and stone-cutting tradition. While some interaction between the Mauryans and the contemporary artists of western Asia is entirely probable and some features of Mauryan art bear its signature, it would be incorrect to state that the Mauryan art was only the product of the ideology behind the Mauryan empire and that it had left no permanent legacy. Second, the Mauryan terracottas too mark a new phase in the history of Indian terracotta art. One need not deny a distinct sense of modelling in some pre-Mauryan terracottas of the Ganga valley, but the evidence is not pervasive. The Indian terracottas assume a distinct time-bound style in the Mauryan period. From both these points of view the Mauryan art marks a new phase in the history of ancient Indian art.
The Asokan pillars are all monolithic and sculpted and are considered, along with their animal capitals above, parts of the sculptural tradition. The specimens available—the Kolhua, Lauriya Nandangarh, Rampurwa, Sanchi, Sankisa and Sarnath lion capitals and the Rampura bull capital—may be only a small proportion of what originally existed. Parts of Mauryan capitals have been found elsewhere (cf. Masarh, Basi, Salempur, Ayodhya), and broken pillars of the same period occur at a number of other places. Whether there is a steady chronological evolution of the animal capitals from the apparently clumsy Sankisa lions to the growling and confident animals of Sarnath is difficult to say; one would rather think of the differing quality of the artists involved. The Rampurwa bull is firmly modelled but full of natural dynamism in the basic style of the elephant which emerges out of the live rock at Dhauli and the small elephants which occur on the facade of the Lomash Rishi cave in the Barabar hills. The tradition of naturalism is equally manifest in the bull, Hon, horse and elephant which are shown along the diameter of the abacus of the Sarnath capital and in the row of geese shown in the sides of the Bodhi throne of Bodh Gaya. The honeysuckles, rosettes, palmettes, lotus-buds, bead-and-reels and volutes as designs on some capitals foreshadow the long history of such motifs in Indian art. However, the design which makes us hold our breath is the design of intersecting circles on the upper surface of the Bodhi throne, which is identical to the intersecting circle design decoration used, very rarely, on the Harappan floors (cf. Balakot, Kalibangan). A sparkling polish of a certain kind on the stone is a signature of the Mauryan period, and from this point of view, the Didarganj yakshini and the Lohanipur torso both fall in the Mauryan period. The Didarganj specimen, which is in the form of a female fly-whisk-bearer, combines dignity with statuesque sensuousness. Whether the free-standing Yaksha figures, including the two Patna yakshas, belong to the Mauryan period is debatable; with V.S. Agrawala we accept a Mauryan date for them. The much smaller mustachioed human head and a few animal heads from the late Mauryan level at Sarnath and the small, partly broken, limestone image of a humpless bull/cow from Harinarayanpur strengthen the assumption that the range of Mauryan art is much wider than the assumed circle of court art. Ring-stones of soapstone and metamorphosed schist, which have a central hole or are without them, vary between 10 and 5/6 cm in diameter and reveal a large range of iconographic elements, among which the figure of the earth goddess or Prithvi, of a type found in gold at Lauriya Nandangarh, seems to be common. Miscellaneous stone reliefs, including three pairs of frolicking male and female on a panel of three scenes from Rajgir, are reminiscent of the iconographic tradition of this type. The flounced-skirted and heavily coiffured females that one sees as a dominant type in the Mauryan terracottas are much less attractive than the naturalistic representations of Mauryan terracotta elephants.
It is not quite certain if the dichotomy offered by art historians between the Mauryan art and the succeeding art during the reign of the Sunga dynasty in north India is as valid as it has generally been imagined to be. First, the stone railing around the Asokan pillar at Sarnath follows the basic tradition of railing by uprights, crossbars and coping stones which was followed by the railings that we find at the ‘Sunga sites’ of Bharhut, Bodh Gaya and Sanchi. Second, the objects found in the late Mauryan levels of Sarnath suggest that even within the rigorously defined chronological framework of the Maurya dynasty there could be a much wider based art tradition. Third, when one considers the depth of variety of artistic depictions on the stupas of Bharhut, Bodh Gaya and Sanchi, only three of perhaps many more such stupas of the period, one is disturbed by the abruptness of it all. Historically this does not seem to make sense and imparts a distinct sense of dissatisfaction.
The recent discoveries of seemingly contemporary stupa railings and medallions in Orissa and the Kanpur district of UP along with the excavated stupa remains at Pauni in Berar indicate that the distribution of the Sunga period and immediately later stupas is more widespread than its distribution along the Gangetic valley–Deccan route at Bodhgaya, Bharhut and Sanchi would suggest. Bharhut is about 14 km to the south of Satna in Madhya Pradesh. Its surviving remains (railings and gateway pillars) were transported to the Indian Museum, Calcutta, where they are still housed. On the basis of palaeography, they were dated between c. 100 and 75 BC. The sculptures were done mainly on the face of the uprights, crossbars and coping stones of the railings. The first impression is that of luxuriant vegetation—flowers and creepers—in the midst of which the medallions depicting the Jataka stories and the uprights showing various semi-divine personages such as yakshas and yakshinis are positioned rather harmoniously. Many of the sculpted scenes and figures contain descriptive labels and/or bear their donors’ names who came from various social classes and places, including such distant ones as Kausambi, Vidisa and Pratisthana. The scenes and individual figures are in low relief, reminiscent of panels done in wood. This deficiency in modelling has been more than adequately made up by the way the human limbs have been rendered in stone. For instance, there is a remarkable similarity between the female hand which holds the branch of a tree and the branch itself. The life-force of the tree seems to have permeated the entire composition, including the human figures as a whole and their individual limbs.
Whatever has survived of the stupa (uprights and some railings) at Bodh Gaya (palaeographically dated c. 50 BC) is much less ornamented, but individual scenes such as ‘Indra bringing grass’ or ‘a male taking off a thorn from the foot of a female’ are finely balanced and harmonious.
Fig. 45 Bharut
That the stupa complex on the Sanchi hill was not an isolated complex but a part of a wider arrangement covering several places (Sonari, Satdhara, Bhojpur and Andher) in the vicinity has become increasingly clear from the recent excavations in the area. The Sanchi hill itself contains three major early stupas. Stupa 1 is the most famous and contains a detailed structural history beginning with the third century BC. The sculptural history is more complex and dated only in terms of different sections. The gateways of Stupa 1 were done under the Satavahana rule in the middle of the first century BC. The rest, apart from the original Mauryan core, came up under the Sungas between c. 175 and 125 BC. The balustrades of Stupa 3 date from the middle of the second century BC. whereas Stupa 3 seems to fall between c. 125 to 100 BC. From the Bharhut-like shallow incisions of floral and vegetal designs to the crowded jataka reliefs on the architraves of the gateways and the exuberant yakshinis or heavenly nymphs not ashamed of their sensuous femininity, there is a clear stylistic evolution of sculptures on the Sanchi hill. This hill overlooks the Betwa valley, and the ancient city of Vidisa lies beyond the river. It is likely that this area was the meeting point of two routes to the Deccan and west India, one coming from Mathura-Rajasthan area and the other from the direction of Bharhut. A third century BC stupa complex which has one major stupa (brick-built with a mud core) and a large number of Satdhara-type stupas has recently been identified at Sohagi Ghat where the Deccan route ascends the Vindhyan scarp.
Trade routes determined the locations of west Indian rock-cut caves and their complement of sculptures in the second and first centuries BC. At places like Bhaja, Karle, Bedsa, Kondane, Pitalkhora and others, the sculptures occur primarily in the verandah walls or as human figures on the top of the pillar brackets in the main rock-cut hall (chaitya hall). The ones on the verandah walls are mostly the figures of donor couples. They belong to a special genre, because of all the types of early Indian art, they retain, more than most, an earth-bound character. Frontality is still traceable, but the figures seem to come out of the rock, and suggest by their linear modelling and emphasis on mass a sense of dynamic strength which is commensurate with the strength of the rock out of which they are carved.
The remarkable concentration of Buddhist religious sites in the Krishna—Godavari delta and its hinterland generated its own style of sculpture, most of all at Amaravati near the ancient city of Dhenukataka. Some carvings here and at Jagayyapeta are in very low relief and somewhat archaic style, which continues to develop through the first century BC and first century AD till in the second and third centuries AD the Andhra style of sculpture (in limestone), as it is called, reaches its apogee. Supreme importance is given in this art to human figures which are now elongated and sturdy and shows relief after relief of frenzied sensuous humans with a better sense of perspective, more light and shade and rhythmic lines leading to a dynamic compositional unity. According to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the doyen of the historians of ancient Indian art, these reliefs represented ‘the most voluptuous and the most delicate flower of Indian sculpture’.
Fig. 46 Sanchi site
Fig. 47 Stupa plan, Sanchi (Mitra, 1971)
Fig. 48 Bodh Gaya site
Voluptuousness with less of delicacy and a lot more of earth-bound strength was the characteristic feature of the yakshinis of the Mathura school of sculpture (in red spotted sandstone) of about the same period, and similarly, with an earlier root. They occur as components of the stupa remains (presumably Jaina in affiliation) at Kankali Tila in Mathura. It is also here that one can trace the transformation of primitive earth-bound yakshas into standing Bodhisattva type images, of which the one dedicated by Bhikshu Bala is a famous example. This is also the time when the Buddha came to be worshipped in the form of an image. However, beyond the figures associated with religions, Mathura has also yielded a large number of ‘secular’ images: the heavy and angular ‘central Asiatic’ royal Kushana images, ‘Hercules and the Nemean lion’, a drunken woman supported by males, and others. There is an extensive range of donor inscriptions from Mathura too. It was an important political and economic centre and this fact is well reflected in the different groups of donors: the nuns and monks, pupils including ‘female pupils’, the royalty, merchants and bankers, artisans including metal-workers, royal barber, courtesans, etc.
In the Gandhara region in the north-west, the nature of diverse influences on its distinct school of art has been debated since the middle of the nineteenth century when its ‘Graeco-Roman’ affinity was first identified. The diverse elements which represent Gandhara art are the following: Buddhism, both in spirit and iconography; central Asian influence in the royal attire; Iranian sun and moon gods; and finally, the row of Classical garland-bearing figures and Corinthian pilasters. Recently it has been designated as ‘the Indus-Oxus school of Buddhist art’ and its area of origin has been supposed to be the Swat valley. It is a subcontinental art which, because of its being a part of the Indus-Oxus zone, amalgamated various elements from different sources and devoted it to the service of the Buddhist faith. The location and density of its sites fits in as much with the patterns of regional trade routes as do the location and density of Buddhist sites anywhere else in the subcontinent.
As far as the terracottas of the last two centuries BC and the first three centuries AD are concerned, there is a close similarity in form and style between the time-bound terracottas and sculptures of this period. Such terracottas have not yet been closely studied from the archaeological point of view, but they seem to be more frequent at the Gangetic valley sites, especially in the Bhagirathi delta which enjoys a special significance in terms of sheer number and diversity of themes ranging from Bharhut-type yakshinis and jataka stories to ordinary secular scenes inclusive of a wide variety of explicit erotic acts. The latter type predates by a long margin the erotic sculptures of the Orissan and Khajuraho temples.
Human faces have been found painted on mica-sheets in the context of the Sunga period at Pataliputra, but for examples of classical Indian paintings within our chosen period one has to refer to the paintings of Buddhist theme, which have survived in Caves 9 and 10 of Ajanta, dated in the second to first century BC. Here and elsewhere a paste of powdered rock, clay, cowdung, chaff or vegetable fibres and molasses was first applied over the rock surface and (when still wet) given a coat of white lime. The painting was done on this surface—Vajralepa of the Indian tradition—in red and yellow ochre, indigo and lapis lazuli blue (not used in early Ajanta), lamp black, chalk white, terre verte and green colours. Instead of calligraphic fineness we get bold and rounded elasticity formed by the ‘surface saturated with highly charged and dense colours, mainly terre verte, Indian red and earth buff, in innumerable tones and shades’.
Another distinct genre of Indian art of the period is ivory. The Kushana period ivories from the trade city of Begram in south Afghanistan provide a rapturous mix of sensuousness and elegance in their female forms, but earlier specimens of ivory work are now being found in the Bhagirathi delta of lower Bengal. These compare well with the sculptural and terracotta specimens of the Sunga period.