Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c5.13

c5.13

The degeneration of sculpture and art in general in Eastern India during the two centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ, is undoubted. During this period the growing scarcity of specimens shows the general decline in plastic art, side by side with want of patronage due to the general decline of the Magadhan Empire and the degeneration of the people of Magadha. The causes of this degeneration are not difficult to find. The troubles following the decline of the Mauryan power, the inroads of the Greeks and the Scythians, contributed very largely to the degeneration of art in the Eastern countries. The successors of Aśoka found it difficult to keep intact the fabric of the great Empire built up by the earlier emperors of the dynasty. The chief characteristics of the post-Mauryan art are the continuance of the principal motifs borrowed from old Persian art and the gradual disappearance of that wonderful polish, which differentiates the art of the early Maurya from that of later periods.