Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c11.22

c11.22

Mauryan Art under Aśoka—Aśoka was a great idealist in the planning of human relationships, both amongst his own people and also his foreign neighbours. On the other hand, he was also intensely practical minded which expressed in recasting his administrative set-up in a manner to be of maximum service to his subjects, and what was no less important was his deciding upon a building programme of the most stupendous nature. The surviving monuments, diverse as they are, show that he had in his mind the whole country or his vast dominion (mahālaka vijita) extending from Kandahar to Dhauli and from Girnar to Mysore. This wide area was within the orbit of his positive planning and therefore he sited his fourteen rock-edicts at suitable points punctuating the perimeter of his kingdom. The next point in his plan was to plot the holy-spots associated with Buddha and Buddhism and to mark them with commemorative stone columns. These monolithic pillars constitute the most brilliant and original class of Aśokan monuments, and the lasting glory of Dharma and Saṅgha (chila-thitike) is still made manifest through them. As in the rock-edicts so in selecting the spots for erecting the stone pillars there appears to be a two-fold plan in the mind of the Emperor. The columns at Pāṭaliputra, Lauriā Nandangarh, Lauriā Ararāj, and Bakhirā mark the stages in the Pilgrim's Progress to Lumbinī, the birth place of Buddha, where a pillar with a definite announcement was raised and nearby another column to commemorate the enlargement of a previous Buddhist Stūpa, both executed in the 20th year of his reign when he personally visited these places. The repairs to the Stūpa of Konākaman had been executed six years earlier (thuve dutiyam vaḍhite). At Lumbinī, besides the stone pillar (silā-thabhe cha usapāpite) he also ordered the building of an enclosure-wall or railing (bhichā) carved of stone (silā-vigaḍa = Sans. śilā-vikṛita). In the same scheme the stone pillar at Sarnath marks the spot of Buddha's Turning the Wheel of Law (Dharma-Chakra-Pravartana). A pillar also stood at Bodhagaya showing the place of Buddha's Enlightenment. The other plan included the pillars to mark the boundaries of Madhyadeśa and the capital of its principal Janapada divisions, e.g. the pillar at Saṅkisā for Pañchāla, at Meerut for Kuru, at Rupar in Ambāla for Kurukshetra the region of Sarasvatī, at Sāñchī for Chedi on the grand route from Mathura to Pratiṣṭhāna, at Śrāvastī in Basti district for Kosala, and at Kauśambī for Vatsa. Thus the capital cities and the boundaries of Āryāvarta, the heart of the Empire, were clearly distinguished.