Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c10.9

c10.9

To attain his object the Mauryan monarch adopted the common practice of royal art patrons, and brought into his service a group of experienced foreign artists of a sufficiently adaptable nature to put into effect his progressive ideas. Historical instances of such a procedure are numerous, but some of those which account for the particular character of the Achaemenid art of Eastern Persia and in the course of time of that of the Asokan school, have a direct bearing on the style which afterwards appeared in Buddhist India For instance in the production of their magnificent palaces at Persepolis and Susa, the Persian kings made use of talent drawn from the leading art schools of the then known world Even without the recorded statement of Diodorus that Egyptian artists worked on these buildings, such attributions as the winged globe and the cavetto cornice are proofs of their employment in this enterprise. Side by side with the skilled craftsman from the Nile were stone carvers from Lonia¹ noted for the fineness of their workmanship and minuteness of detail, evidences of which may be recognised in the high quality of the reliefs on the palace walls. Masons' marks from the Greek alphabet on the Hall of a Thousand Columns which forms such an important part of the Persian palace indicate that artificers from Hellas took their share in the construction, while in the realm of the fine arts there is the testimony of Pliny (xxxiv, 68) that the Greek sculptor Telephanes of Phocaea was attached to the courts of both Darius and Xerxes.