Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c11.3

c11.3

Strength and majesty were the hall-mark of Mauryan Institution and they are seen at best in monuments of Mauryan art. In this period we meet with two styles which may be clearly distinguished, viz. court-art as evident in the building of the city of Pāṭaliputra, the palace with its assembly hall of Chandragupta and the numerous monuments of Aśoka. The other was a folk art tradition marked by some clay figurines but more conspicuously by a group of free-standing statues of colossal *Yakṣha* and *Yakṣhīs* found at Mathura, Vidiśā, Vārāṇasī, Pāṭaliputra and Siśupalagarhj in Orissa. The court art was based for its ideas and execution on the inspiration of the emperors and the style is dominant and original and marked by a perfection of carving rarely achieved ever afterward. The planning of the monument is so vast aud grand that it has few parallels in World History. The folk art typifies an older plastic tradition in clay and wood which was now put in stone, as seen in the massive *Yakṣha* statuary which are also of exceptional value as models of subsequent divine images and human figures.