Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c11.151

c11.151

But the question, which concerns us, directly relates to the origin of such finished art as that of the lion capital of Aśoka, which displays the climax of technical perfection and a complete mastery of the secrets of modelling and carving in the round. The Mauryan polish itself is without any traces of its existence either in the succeeding or preceding periods. What then was the source of the unprecedented artistic activity during the reigns of Chandragupta and Aśoka ? In the words of Sir John Marshall, "What is the explanation of the gulf which separates these two sculptures (1) the primitive unifacial image of Parkham, and (2) the richly modelled capital of Sarnath?" He himself gave an answer to this question, namely, that it was the Achaemenian art of Iran which served as the model for the Mauryan art through the intermediary agencies of the Hellenistic artists of Bactria. Following Senart, he thinks that the Aśokan edicts were inspired by the Achaemenian inscriptions and the Mauryan palace at Pāṭaliputra by the palaces at Susa and Persepolis built by emperor Darius in the hey-day of that most glorious empire of antiquity. According to him it was in Persia that the animal-crowned capitals of pillars were evolved. The smooth shafts of the Mauryan pillars were copied from Persian originals of which specimens are still existent in the plain of Murghat at Istakhr, Naksh-i-Rustum and Persepolis. It was from Persia again that craftsmen of Aśoka learnt to give lustrous polish to stone of which abundant evidence survives at Persepolis and elsewhere. Sir John Marshall believes that the Persian influence came to India through Bactria in which area there were great centres of civilization under the Seleucids with whom political and cultural relations were established by the Indians. He has emphatically stated that the Sarnath capital is alien to Indian ideas in expression and in execution.