Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c4.16

c4.16

Chapter VII (a), Mauryan Art, makes a special study of the remains of Mauryan palace at Kumrahara (Chandragupta-Sabhā). The evidence of the Mahābhārata about the assembly hall of king Yudhishṭhira has been invoked as supplying common features with the Mauryan assembly hall. The problem of the origin of Mauryan art and especially of Mauryan polish is taken up in detail and new literary evidence has been extracted to show the antiquity of the polish on stone and ceramics (Northern Black Polished Ware) in India. Much attention has been given to the six component parts of the Sārnāth Lion Capital with special reference to their factual description and symbolical meaning. The lion capital illustrates Asoka's conception of Buddha as Mahāpurusha. I have dealt with this topic in much more detail in my book ‘Chakradhvaja—The Wheel Flag of India’ which may be usefully consulted for showing that the Lion Capital of Sarnath was the outcome of the National consciousness of the Indian people, including the followers of Buddhist, Jaina and Brāhmanical religions and tradition as handed down from the Indus Valley and Ṛigveda up to the 19th cent. for which about fifty new sources have been cited there.