Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c12.s2.1

c12.s2.1

The village of Bharhut is situated six miles to the north-east of Uchahara, and nine miles nearly due south of the Satna station on the Jabulpore railway. It is exactly 120 miles to the south west of Allahabad and rather more than half way towards Jabulpore. The village belonged to the erstwhile Nagod State. It was on the ancient route which connected the north Kosala country with Chedi and Dakshiṇa-Kosala and was one of the most frequented highways which picked up the Magadha sector through the Son Valley. As indicated by the inscriptions the rich merchants and householders dedicated their wealth in raising one of the most impressive monuments of Indian art in the centre of this highway of trade. The other parallel route lay towards the west connecting Mathura with Vidiśā on the Vetravatī in Central India and with Pratishṭhāna on the Godāvarī in the south. Here the Stūpa of Sanchi occupied a position similar to that of Bharhut and the two together furnish proof of some intercontinental planning ordained by the exigencies of commercial and religious life. The two Stūpas are closely interrelated not only by their massive architecture but by the exhaustive documentation of religious ideas and art forms and especially the traditional folk cults and motifs depicted on an epic scale. Both of them adequately illustrate the art movement which submerged the country during the Śuṅga period as the natural outcome of the art consciousness generated during the Mauryan age.