Studies in Indian Art c12.s13.8

c12.s13.8

The Āyāgapaṭṭas with their emphasized symbolical character have greater affinities with the earlier Indian art as known to us in the monuments of Sāñchī which are the products of an age in which symbols constituted the language *par excellence* for the expression of religious and philosophic thought. That phase fell into the background after the emergence of the cult images of the Tīrthaṅkaras and the Buddhas, both perhaps serving a common religious urge in about the 1st century A.D. In the art of Mathura itself the symbols gradually give place to the image. But on the Āyāgapaṭṭas there is still a stage of transition and it is clearly apparent that the symbols there are not less important a medium of the artist's language than the figure of the principal saint. They may be taken to belong to about the early first century A.D., when the symbol worship and the image worship existed side by side, the one as a significant heritage of the past and the other as an usher of a now era The rich and famous school of sculpture which flourished during the Kushāṇa and Gupta periods (cir. 1st century— 6th century A.D.) at Mathurā has to its credit a considerable number of Brāhmanical images, in addition to the vast and varied collections of Buddhist and Jaina sculptures which are well known. Belonging to the formative period of Indian art when the earliest images of gods and goddesses in all the above three religions were being evolved, these statues are of the utmost importance. We know that early examples of the Buddha image have been found at Mathurā, which according to Coomaraswamy was the place where the image of the Buddha originated¹, a conclusion in which there is much more substantial truth than is at first recognised.