Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c12.s3.t1.4

c12.s3.t1.4

Figures of animals or birds are as a rule arranged schematically in pairs (Saṅghāṭa). The most conspicuous positions for the animals are the faces of the "false capitals" separating the architraves. The animals are both real and legendary, sometimes with riders and sometimes without them. They include goats, horses, bulls, camels, elephants, lions and leogriffs. On the east gateway (lowest architrave inner face, north end) the riders come from a cold climate as shown by their wearing the northern dress (udīchya veśa). Winged lions (Sapaksha Siṃha) and leogriff (Siṃhavyāla) formed part of wide canvas of motifs common to India and Western Asia. The floral designs have a unique richness and exuberance which are among the greatest beauties of this monument. According to Marshall motifs taken from the plant world have at all times been handled with exquisite taste by the Indian artists, but never more exquisitely than by the sculptors of Sanchi with the exception of the honeysuckle pattern on the south gateway and the grapevine on the west gateway. Most of the plant designs are purely Indian in character and based, as they are, on the most careful and faithful observation of nature par excellence anything of which Assyrian or Persian art was capable. Lotus representing the birth of the individual and the cosmos which was the commonly accepted symbol of fertility, abundance and blooming life, is a most favourite among all floral subjects. Some of the best examples are to be seeen on the outer sides of the pillars of the gateways. Sometimes the lotus takes form of kalpalatā, the like of which we have seen at Bharhut. At others the lotus is treated as a repeat motif and worked into the form of the Tree of Life (Śrī-vriksha), made much more gorgeous by pairs of riders on lions or leogriffs as carved on the right pillar of the West Gateway. The grapevine border and the horned leonine figures point to Western Asiatic intimations in the making of this form of the Tree of Life which seems to have been adapted to accord with the Indian conception of Śrī-vriksha. The footprints of the Buddha and the *Triratna* emblem find a natural place in the reliefs on the pillars as parts of Buddhist symbolical iconography.