Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c11.156

c11.156

The round drum, an essential part of the capital is carved with four *chakras* facing the cardinal points and four animals between them. The wheel symbol again is a fourfold replica of the surmounting *Dharma-chakra*, and the idea of a *Chakravartī* ruler, rolling in four directions is best typified here, e. g. in the description of Sudassana and Māndhātā. The four animals and the four *chakras* taken together give a complete picture of the *Anotapta* or Minasarovara lake which was a cosmogonical concept accepted both by the Brāhmanical and Buddhist traditions. This motif was painted in the Mahā Ummagga palace as stated in the Jātaka of that name and there is no doubt that the idea of the *Anotapta* was the same as that of the lake of Brahmā, with four faces, four streams and every thing connected there with conforming to a fourfold pattern which is the basic plan of the cosmos as accepted by the entire religious tradition in India. The presence of the Four Great Animals (*Mahā Ājāneya Paśu*) both together as at Sarnath and separately as on the other Aśokan columns, is not an isolated phenomenon of Mauryan times but has a history throughout from the Indus Valley right up to the nineteenth century, both in art and literature. There is thus no question of any foreign influence or borrowing of the figures on the round abacus.