History of Indian and Indonesian Art c6: Part I: Pre-Maurya

History of Indian and Indonesian Art c6

Language: English

c6.s1 Indo-Sumerian — 14 parts
c6.s2 Dravidians and Āryans — 22 parts
c6.s3 The Śaiśunāga-Nanda Period — 11 parts
c6.s4 Early Asiatic — 26 parts

Part I: Pre-Maurya

Indo-Sumerian

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It has long been known that seals of a type unique in India have been found in the Indus valley¹. Quite recently excavations at two sites, Harappa in the Pañjāb, and Mohenjo-Daro in Sind, have revealed the existence of extensive city sites with remains of brick buildings by no means of a primitive character, and an abundance of minor antiquities indicating a period of transition from the stone to the copper age. These remains underly those of the Kuṣāna period, but are not far from the surface; the existence of still lower strata suggests that the Indus valley culture must have had a long previous history in the same area and that it may be regarded as indigenous².

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¹ Cunningham, 4, vol., p. 108 and pl. XXXIII; Fleet.

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² For the Indus valley discoveries, still in progress, see Marshall, 9, 12, and in A. S. I., A. R., 1921—22, pl. XIII and 1923—24, pp. 47—54; Chanda, 2; Mackay.

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"The more we learn of the copper age", says Rostovtzeff, "the more important it is seen to be. This epoch created brilliant centres of cultured life all over the world, especially in the Orient. To the centres already known, Elam, Mesopotamia and Egypt, we can now add Turkestan and Northern Caucasus"³. And finally the Indus valley. It may be remarked too that the further we go back in history, the nearer we come to a common cultural type, the further we advance, the greater the differentiation. The chalcolithic culture was everywhere characterised by matriarchy and a cult of the productive powers of nature, and of a mother goddess; and by a great development of the arts of design. We must now realise that an early culture of this kind once extended from the Mediterranean to the Ganges valley, and that the whole of the Ancient East has behind it this common inheritance.

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³ *The Iranians and Greeks in South Russia*, Oxford, 1922.

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The antiquities found in the Indus valley, other than brick buildings and a limited amount of masonry, include limestone figures of bearded men (fig. 1), and terracottas representing female figures and animals, the latter including the rhinoceros, now extinct in the Indus valley. No anthropomorphic images, other than the terracottas, have been found; but a blue faience tablet with pictographic characters at the back has in front the representations of a cross-legged figure, with kneeling worshippers right and left, and a Nāga behind, a remarkable anticipation of familiar types in later Buddhist art of the historical period. Painted pottery analogous to the prehistoric pottery of Baluchistān is abundant; it may be remarked that in Baluchistān there survives an isolated Dravidian language, Brahui, which had long been regarded as a possible island, connecting Dravidian India with the West. Other remains include beads and other ornaments of chank, carnelian, etc; ring stones or maces; faience bangles; hematite pestle · polished gold jewellery; coins; abundant neolithic implements; and above all, seals. Iron is lacking, and the horse was unknown.

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The seals (figs. 2—6) are of ivory, or blue or white faience, square in form, and with a perforated boss at the back for suspension. They bear a great variety of designs, including bulls both with and without humps, elephants, tigers, and a representation of a *pippala* tree (*Ficus religiosa*) with two horned monsters affronted attached to the stem. Further, the seals bear numerous characters of a pictographic script which it has not yet been possible to decipher¹. The representation of these various animals, especially that of the bull and elephant, is masterly in the extreme; that of the limestone sculpture is aesthetically decadent, rather than primitive.

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¹ Attempted by Waddell, 4, and Note in J. R. A. S., Jan. 1926. Waddell identifies Sumerians with Āryans; the equation Sumerian = Dravidian is much more plausible. For another attempt to read the seals see Bishan Svarup in J. B. O. R. S., IX, 1923, and criticisms by Chanda in the same volume. Some scholars connect Assyrians with Asuras.

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It has been shown that these antiquities bear a general resemblance to those found on Sumerian sites in Mesopotamia, especially Kish and Susa, dating from the fifth to third millenniums B. C. The resemblance amounts to identity in the case of an early Sumerian glazed steatite seal from Kish, alike in respect of the script and of the bull. The miniature funeral potteries of both areas are almost indistinguishable; it may be noted, too, that the oblong, short-legged terracotta sarcophagi of prehistoric South Indian sites are of a Mesopotamian type. Carnelian beads found at Kish are decorated with white lines on a red ground, obtained by local calcination of the surface; this technique, unknown west of Mesopotamia, is so common in India, though at a later date, as to suggest a probable Indian origin². Some Indian boat designs are of a Mesopotamian character, the coracle in particular, while the presence of conch at Susa and of teak and Indian cedar in Babylon are evidences of a seaborne trade, as early as the eighth century B. C., nor is there much reason to doubt that it had begun still earlier³.

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² Mackay. Bloch, 1.

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³ Kennedy; Hornell, 2, p. 208.

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While the remains alluded to above as found in the Sind valley certainly go back to the third or fourth millennium B. C., it must not be supposed that a complete hiatus divides this early period from later times. A part of the remains at Mohenjo-Daro probably dates between 1000 and 400 B. C., and on the other hand the minor antiquities from various Indian sites, as at Basāṛh, Taxila (Bhiṛ mound), Pāṭaliputra, and South Indian prehistoric sites go back at least to the fifth century B. C.

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The study of Indo-Sumerian antiquities is still in its infancy, and it is too early to draw far-reaching conclusions. But it is at least probable "that the civilisation of which we have now obtained this first glimpse was developed in the Indus valley itself and was as distinctive of that region, as the civilisation of the Pharoahs was distinctive of the Nile"; and if the Sumerians, as is generally supposed, represent an intrusive element in Mesopotamia, "then the possibility is clearly suggested of India proving ultimately to be the cradle of their civilisation, which in its turn lay at the root of Babylonian, Assyrian and Western Asiatic culture generally"¹.

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¹ Marshall, A. S. I., A. R., 1923—24. For the theory of the eastern origin of Western Asiatic and even Egyptian culture, with special reference to the origin of copper and of early religious systems, see de Morgan.

Dravidians and Āryans

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Certainly before the second millennium B. C. the Dravidians, whether of western origin, or as seems quite probable, of direct neolithic descent on Indian soil, had come to form the bulk of a population thinly scattered throughout India. These Dravidians should be the Dāsas or Dasyus with whom the conquering Āryans waged their wars; their *purs* or towns, are mentioned in the Vedas, and they are described as *anāsaḥ*, noseless, a clear indication of their racial type.

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Amongst the elements of Dravidian origin are probably the cults of the phallus² and of mother-goddesses, Nāgas, Yakṣas and other nature spirits; and many of the arts. Indeed, if we recognize in the Dravidians a southern race, and in the Āryans a northern, it may well be argued that the victory of kingly over tribal organisations, the gradual reception into orthodox religion of the phallus cult and mother-goddesses, and the shift from abstract symbolism to anthropomorphic iconography in the period of theistic and *bhakti* development, mark a final victory of the conquered over the conquerors. In particular, the popular, Dravidian element, must have played the major part in all that concerns the development and office of image-worship, that is, of *pūjā* as distinct from *yajña*³.

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² Worshippers of the *śiśna* are mentioned with disapproval in the Vedas. A prehistoric *liṅgam* is illustrated by Foote, 2, pl. XV. An object resembling a *liṅgam* has been found at Mohenjo-Daro.

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³ For the theory of northern and southern races see Strzygowski, *Altai-Iran*, etc. In India, Marshall, 11; and Kramrisch, pp. 79—87.

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To the Dravidians are probably due the forms of architecture based on bamboo construction; the architecture of the Toda hut has been cited as a prototype, or at any rate a near analogue, of the early barrel-vaulted *caitya*-hall and the horse-shoe arch¹. Curved roofs, common in India, are rare in the rest of the world. The stone slab construction of many early temples is likewise of Dravidian (dolmen) origin. Early maritime trade and all that has to do with fishing must be Dravidian. The chank or conch industry is a case in point; the use of chank bangles, and of the conch as a trumpet in ritual and war must have been borrowed from Dravidian sources before the epic period².

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¹ Simpson, 3. But I cannot regard the "Indo-Aryan" *śikhara* as directly derived from a primitive type of bamboo construction: it is a later development, produced by the reduplication of vertically compressed storeys. See discussion on page 83.

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² Hornell, 1.

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The early history of the Dravidians in the Dekkhan and Southern India is obscure. It is fairly evident that in these areas Dravidian culture had already attained a high level, economic, martial, and literary, in centuries preceding the Christian era. Already in the third century B. C. the great Āndhra empire stretched across the Dekkhan from east to west³. In the far south a powerful and prosperous Pāṇḍyan kingdom flourished before the beginning of the Christian era, with a capital at Korkai. The first three centuries of the Christian era represent an Augustan period in the history of Tamil culture, and there is sufficient literary evidence for a high state of development of poetry, music drama, sculpture and painting. At the same time there had grown up a flourishing trade with Rome on the one hand, and with Farther India and Indonesia on the other, the principal articles of export being pepper, cinnamon, pearls and beryl⁴.

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³ Smith, 4, p. 217; Jouveau-Dubreuil, 6; Bhandarkar, Sir R. G., *Early history of the Dekkhan*.

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⁴ Smith, 4, ch. XVI; Aiyangar, M. D., *Tamil studies*, Madras, 1914; Kanakasabhai.

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A brief reference must be made to the prehistoric Indian antiquities which cannot be exactly placed or dated. Eoliths have been found in India and Ceylon, and paleoliths are widely distributed. Remains of the Neolithic cultures, some of incalculable age, others later than the beginning of the Christian era, include the usual types of stone weapons, pottery, and dolmens. In northern India a copper age succeeded and in part overlapped (Mohenjo-Daro, etc.) the neolithic. Finds of copper weapons have been made in many places, the most important being that at Gungeria, C. P., where silver ornaments were also found. The weapons include bare and shouldered celts, plain and barbed spearheads, swords and harpoons, often in handsome shapes and finely wrought; some are of great weight and may have been used for cult purposes. There is no bronze age, nor does bronze begin to appear much before the first century A. D. Iron may have come into use in the earlier part of the first millennium B. C., or may have been known to the Āryans still earlier; the facts that there is no copper age in the south, that then is a continuity of stone and iron using cultures, that the technique of chank working requires a thin iron saw, and that iron weapons (of uncertain age) are characteristic of prehistoric sites in the south, that iron ore is abundant and readily worked, and that steel was known already in Indian and Ceylon in the second century B. C.¹, all suggest that iron and steel may have come into use at an early date and may have been discovered in India. Against this view are the facts that iron is not mentioned in the early Vedic literature, and that the Hittites were using iron already about 1500 B. C. According to Sayce the Khalybes, who were neighbours of the Hittites, and perhaps of the same race, had the reputation of being the discoverers of steel; in any case, they were its transmitters to the Greeks². The existence in India of Muṇḍā languages, of Mon-Khmer affinity, seems to show that the southward migration of Sino-Tibetan races which peopled the Irawadi, Menam and Mekong valleys and the Indonesian islands had also entered India at some very early period. A pre-Dravidian element in Southern India is probably Negrito or proto-Malay, and Hornell finds a trace of this first connection of India with the east in the single outrigger boat. Sylvain Levi recognizes survivals of a pre-Dravidian language in the occurrence of doublet place-names³.

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¹ Hornell, 1.

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² For the prehistoric remains see Foote, 1, 2; Bloomfield; Smith, V. A. in *Imperial Gazetteer*. vol II; and references in C. H. I., pp. 692, 693. Most of the literature on the stone age in Ceylon will be found in Spolia Zeylanica (Colombo). For the literature on iron see p. 34, note 4. The making of steel in small ingots by a true "Bessemer" process has survived in Southern India and Ceylon into the present century. If the early Vedic *ayas* refers to iron we might suppose that the use of iron weapons enabled the invaders to overcome the indigenous copper-using Dasyus.

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³ Hornell, 2 (the introduction of the coconut, of Pacific origin, and of the double-outrigger boat, due probably to the seafaring Malays who colonised Madagascar, are referable to the later period of maritime expansion, about the beginning of the Christian era); Lévi, 3, pp. 55—57.

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The Āryans, whose origin is uncertain, appear in India and Western Asia about the same time. The Indo-Īrānian separation may date about 2500 B. C. Āryan names are recognizable in the case of the Kassites, who ruled in Babylonia about 1746—1180 B. C., and those of Āryan deities were in use amongst the Mitani people at Boghaz-Koi in Cappadocia about 1400 B. C.⁴ The Āryans appear to have entered India between 2000 and 1500 B. C. through Afghānistān and the Hindu Kush, settling at first in the upper Indus valley, later in the upper Ganges valley, later still reaching the sea, the Vindhyās and the Narbadā, and still later penetrating to the Dekkhan and the far south⁵.

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⁴ The Hittite language has Indo-European affinities. A treatise by a Mitanian author on horse-breeding found at Boghaz-koi contains numerous Sanskrit words; the first breeders and trainers of horses seem to have been a Sanskrit speaking race.

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⁵ For recent general discussions of the Āryan question in India see C. H. I., Chs. III and IV; and Jarl Charpentier in B. S. O. S., IV. 1. 1926

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The Vedic Āryans were proficient in carpentry, building houses and racing chariots of wood; and in metal work, making vessels of *ayas*, presumably copper, for domestic and ritual use, and using gold jewellery. They wove, knew sewing and tanning, and made pottery. The early books afford no certain evidence for the making of images of any kind; on the other hand it is impossible to suppose that the manufactures alluded to above were devoid of significant decoration. In all probability, the early Āryan art was "decorative", or more accurately, abstract and symbolical; in other words, a Northern art in Strzygowski's sense¹.

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¹ Strzygowski, 1, 2, 3, 4.

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The probable character of early Āryan art at the time of the Indo-Īrānian separation has been brilliantly visualised by the same writer; he applies to this ancient art of Altai-Īrān, whose cognates we should naturally expect to find in India, the name Mazdean. The dominating conception is that of Hvarena (the Indian Varuṇa), the power of Ahura-Mazda "that makes the running waters gush from springs, plants sprout from the soil, winds blow the clouds, and men come to birth" and "governs the courses of the sun, moon, and stars". The characteristic expression of such ideas is to be sought in a kind of landscape "originating in a philosophy of the universe, and based upon significance and form... not upon natural objects exactly reproduced". This Mazdean art should include landscapes showing the sun and clouds, the earth with its plants and herds, and the waters; river landscapes with formal trees; hunting scenes; and symbolic geometrical arrangements of birds, animals and plants. The use of ornamented textiles and decorative hangings, characteristic for nomad races, is also indicated; and these are the forerunners of mural decoration consisting of formal floral ornament enclosed in framed spaces, where the essential element is pattern rather than representation². Landscape of this type, indeed, can be recognized on punch-marked coins, in early Buddhist reliefs, Ajaṇṭā and Rājput paintings, and in types of folk-art used in ritual decoration³ and in many textiles. Indian art and culture, in any case, are a joint creation of the Dravidian and Āryan genius, a welding together of symbolic and representative, abstract and explicit language and thought. Already at Bhārhut and Sāñcī the Āryan symbol is yielding to its environment and passing into decoration; Kuṣāna art, with the fact of imagery and its roots in *bhakti*, is essentially Dravidian. Already, however, the Indra-Śānti figure at Bodhgayā shows Āryan affecting Dravidian modes of expression, anticipating the essential qualities of all later *sāttvik* images. The Gupta Buddhas, Elephanta Maheśvara, Pallava *liṅgams*, and later Naṭarājas, are all products of the crossing of two spiritual natures; there is an originally realistic intention, but accommodated to the terms of pure design. Every icon is thus at once a symbol and a representation; the worshipper, though he knows that the deity takes the forms that are imagined by his worshippers, is nevertheless persuaded that the form is like the deity. Just in the same way the ascetic and sensual, opposed in primitive thought, and all other pairs of opposites, are theoretically and emotionally reconciled in mediaeval philosophy and faith. This in a very real sense was a "marriage of the East and West", or North and South, consummated, as the donors of an image would say "for the good of all sentient beings': a result, not of a superficial blending of Hellenistic and Indian technique, but of the crossing of spiritual tendencies, racial *saṁskāras* (preoccupations), that may well have been determined before the use of metals was known.

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² Strzygowski, 4.

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³ Tagore, 1; Annandale.

The Śaiśunāga-Nanda Period

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642—320 B. C.

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A definitely historical period may be said to begin with the first half of the sixth century B. C. The kings of two dynasties ruling in Magadha include the Śaiśunāgas (ca. 642—413 B. C.) and the Nandas (ca. 413—322); of the former, Bimbisāra (Śrenika), the builder of New Rājagṛha, and Ajātaśatru (Kuṇika), the founder of Pāṭaliputra, were contemporaries of Mahāvīra and Buddha. The period is that of the later Vedic literature (*Brāhmaṇas*, *Upaniṣads*, and earlier *Sūtras*, and for the latter part of it the Buddhist *Jātakas* afford evidence. Vedic literature shows little or no knowledge of the West; but Darius in the sixth century B. C. had annexed a part of the Indus valley, and in the time of Alexander's invasion (327) the Indus was still the boundary between India and Persia. Vast areas of the Pañjāb and in Sind, now arid, were then still rich and prosperous.

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The later Vedic books show that a knowledge of the metals has advanced; tin, lead, and silver are mentioned as well as two varieties of *ayas*, usually regarded as copper and iron. Cotton, linen, silk and woolen garments were worn; a linen robe used in the Rājasuya ceremony was embroidered with representations of ritual vessels. Storeyed buildings are mentioned (Ṛgveda Saṁhitā, 6, 46, 9)¹. Round and square huts, bricks, plates, cups and spoons of gold and silver, iron knives, needles, mirrors, elevated bedsteads, thrones and seats, musical instruments, millstones, cushions, turbans (worn by the king in the Rājasuya ceremony and by students after graduation), crowns, jewellery, earthen-ware and a ship are mentioned in connection with the rituals. Writing, no doubt an early form of the Brāhmī character, must have been known in the eighth century B. C. or earlier, but mnemonic methods were preferred for handing down the sacred texts.

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¹ For Vedic references to architecture, see Ganguly, 3.

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The *Jātakas* etc. describe the organisation of craftsmen in gilds, eighteen in number, including "the woodworkers, the smiths, the leather-dressers, the painters and the rest, expert in various crafts". The smiths, workers in any metal, were already called *kammāra*, a name by which the higher craftsmen are still known in the south and in Ceylon. As in Ceylon, too, a characteristic localisation of industries in craft-villages in indicated; in towns, a further localisation in streets or quarters. Ivory workers amongst others are mentioned¹.

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¹ Rhys Davids in C.H.I., Ch. VIII, p. 206.

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Actual remains of pre-Maurya date, apart from the prehistoric antiquities above referred to, are comparatively few. The cyclopean walls of Old Rājagṛha are undoubtedly very ancient. Excavation of what are apparently Vedic burial-mounds of the seventh or eighth century B. C. at Lauṛiyā-Nandangaṛh have yielded amongst other objets a small repoussée gold plaque (fig. 105) bearing the figure of a nude female, probably the Earth goddess of the burial hymn². M. Jouveau-Dubreuil believes that he has discovered in Keraḷa (Malabar) rock-cut tombs of Vedic age. The most remarkable type is the "hollow stupa with central column", a circular chamber, hemispherical in section, and with a very slender central pillar, apparently representing the centre pole of a tent or thatched hut, extending from floor to roof. A similar tomb is described by Longhurst; other caves by Logan, including another circular type with an opening or luffer in the roof³.

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² Bloch, 4.

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³ Jouveau-Dubreuil, 4; Longhurst, 5; Logan, 1 and 2. The Vedic age of these interesting antiquities is doubtful: see Finot in B. É. F. E. O., 1922, p. 247, and Shastri in A. S. I., A. R., 1922—23, p. 133.

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Minor antiquities of undoubted pre-Maurya date have been found at various sites, of which the Bhiṛ mound at Taxila is the most important. The remains excavated here include beads and lathe-turned polished hard stones, terra-cotta reliefs (some resembling the Earth goddess from Lauṛiyā referred to above), and two polished sandstone discs. The antiquities found here and elsewhere prove that glass making had attained a high level before the Maurya period, and that the cutting and polishing of hard stones in the fourth and fifth centuries B. C. had reached a level of technical accomplishment which was sustained in the Maurya period, but never afterwards surpassed. Other terra-cottas of probably pre-Maurya date have been found at Nagarī, Bhīṭā, Basāṛh, and Pāṭaliputra⁴.

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⁴ For the antiquities of the Bhiṛ mound see A. S. I., A. R., 1919—20 and 1920—21. The carved stone discs and some other probably pre-Mauryan objects are described on p. 20.

Early Asiatic

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The Indo-Sumerian and Indo-Īrānian background outlined in the preceding chapters naturally prepares us for the recognition of many common elements in Early Indian and Western Asiatic art. And in fact a great variety of motifs found in Maurya, Śuṅga and early Āndhra art, and thus antedating the age of Hellenistic influence, present a Western Asiatic appearance, suggesting parallels in Sumerian, Hittite, Assyrian, Mykenean, Cretan, Trojan, Lykian, Phoenician, Achaemenid and Scythian cultures. A partial list of such motifs would include such mythical monsters as winged lions, centaurs, griffons, tritons; animals formally posed in profile with head forward, facing, or turned back, animals addorsed and affronted, animal combats and friezes; the sun car with four horses; the bay wreath and mural crown; altar or battlement friezes of Bhārhut and Oṛissā; the tree of life; mountain and water formulae; palmette and honeysuckle (blue lotus), rosette and petal-moulding (rose lotus), acanthus, reel and bead; lotus or "bell" (so-called "Persepolitan") capital; Troy mark and other symbols on punch-marked coins. These and others, such as the fret, spiral, volute, labyrinth and *svastika* have survived in folk art up to modern times and are widely distributed in India and Ceylon¹.

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¹ The material is too abundant to be cited in detail; see amongst other sources Birdwood, p. 325 ff.; Coomaraswamy, 5; Cunningham, 2, 3; Fergusson, 1, 2; Foucher, 1; Grünwedel; Marshall, 5, 6, 7; Maisey; Perera; Spooner, 7, 8, 10; Strzygowski, 3; Tagore, 1; Walsh. The Hittites, ca. 1700—1200 B. C. played a considerable part in developing Babylonian designs and transmitting them to the Eastern Mediterranean; most likely it is more for this reason than because of direct connections that Indo-Hittite and Indo-Lydian parallels can be recognized, the forms being cognate in West and East. The *svastika* appears in the lowest strata at Susa, the double-headed eagle is Hittite and probably earlier. For the early motifs see Pottier, Délégation en Perse, vol. 13. Animals with interlacing necks are Sumerian (Weber, O., p. 59, fig. 14). Indian numerals are used in ancient Hittite texts (Jensen, P., in Sitz. k. bai. Ak. Wiss., 1919, pp. 367 ff.).

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A striking example is afforded by the group of designs representing two or more animals having but one head, so placed as to be equally appropriate to each of the several bodies. Designs of lions of this type occur on an Etruscan vase of the sixth century B. C., on a Śuṅga railing pillar from Gaṛhwā, and in eighteenth century Siṁhalese folk art². A design of four deer is even more remarkable; it occurs on a Chalcidian vase of the sixth century B. C. (derived, no doubt, as Morin-Jean suggests, from an oriental textile), then on a capital of Cave I at Ajaṇṭā (fig. 7), in a Rājput drawing of the nineteenth century, and finally in Southern India in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries¹. An reverse type is illustrated by the two-headed bird which first appears in Hittite art at Boghaz-Koi, then on a Jaina *stūpa* base at Taxila, later as a common Saracenic and European armorial device, and finally in Siṁhalese folk art².

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² Morin-Jean, fig. 175; Cunningham, 4, vol. X, pl. V; Coomaraswamy, 5; cf. Martin, F. R., *Miniature painters and painting of Persia, India and Turkey*, 1912, pl. 164; Sarre and Mittwoch, *Zeichnungen von Riza Abbasi*, 1914, pl. 11; British Museum Ms. Or. 2529, f. 141; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Rajput drawing no. 25, 531.

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¹ Morin-Jean, *fig.* 154; Coomaraswamy, 5; Rajput drawing, M. F. A. Boston, no. 26, 50.

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² Springer, *Kunstgeschichte*, 1923, fig. 177; Marshall, 6, p. 74; Bell, 2; Coomaraswamy, 1.

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The cylindrical *stūpa* with drum in two stages, as seen at Beḍsā and in the Kuṣāna period is identical in form with a Phoenician tomb at Amrith (Marath) in North Syria³. The Bhārhut altar or battlement-frieze occurs as a string course on the same tomb and on a Babylonian *kudurru*⁴. Lydian excavated and monolithic tombs at Pinara and Xanthos on the south coast of Asia Minor present some analogy with the early Indian rock-cut *caitya*-halls; but the Lydian door jambs are erect⁵. The true arch, which is widely if sparsely distributed in India long before the Muḥammadan period, occurs in Sumerian and other Mesopotamian sites⁶.

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³ Springer, loc. cit. fig. 193; Perrot and Chipiez, *Phénice-Chypre*, fig. 95; against this analogy is the fact that the *early* stūpas are always hemispherical (cf. fig. 292).

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⁴ Springer, loc. cit.; Delaporte, fig. 11. The form occurs in India not only in the frieze, but as an altar and as a battlement.

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⁵ Springer, loc. cit. figs. 188, 191.

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⁶ Sumerian examples, see Perrot and Chipiez, Phénice-Chypre, fig. 55; Woolley, C. L., *Excavations at Ur*, Antiquaries Journal, V, London, 1925, p. 387, and pls. XXXVII, XLV. For Indian examples see note on p. 73.

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Another parallel is afforded by the occurrence of shoulder wings (figs. 16, 103) on certain terra-cottas and figures of deities found in India⁷. An early Indian terra-cotta type of female divinity closely resembles a form found at Ur⁸.

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⁷ Spooner, 8, p. 116 and pl. XLIV (Basāṛh); Vogel, 6, 1909—10, pl. XXVIII, c, and 13, p. 104 (Sūrya, D 46 in the Mathurā Museum); A. S. I., A. R., 1922—23, pl. X, b (bronze goddess from Akhun Ḍherī). Sir John Evans in Journ. Hellenic Soc. XLIV, 1925, pt. 1, states that the sacral knots on the shoulders of the Minoan goddess became the shoulder wings of Greek art.

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⁸ C. B. S. 15634 in the Philadelphia University Museum, from the cemetery of Diqdiqqeh near Ur, assigned to 2400—2000 B. C.

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Other analogies are technical: thus, the art of granulating gold, which may have originated in Egypt in the sixth dynasty, and is highly characteristic of Trojan, Mykenean and later pre-Christian Mediterranean cultures, is typical of the gold jewellery found at many early Buddhist sites in India, e. g. Toṛdher in the Yūsufzai district and Piprāhwā in Nepāl, and equally of modern Tamil and Siṁhalese jewellery in Ceylon⁹. On the other hand the art of encrusting gems seems to be of Indian origin, not appearing in the Mediterranean until after the time of Alexander¹⁰. The beaten pottery technique of the early eastern Mediterranean has been recognized at Chārsada, and is represented by ancient and modern practise in Ceylon¹. Early Indian and Assyrian glass are of similar composition².

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⁹ Marshall, 11; Coomaraswamy, 1, pls. XLVIII—L. See also pp. 135, 136 and fig. 375.

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¹⁰ Marshall, 11; Coomaraswamy in Spolia Zeylanica, (technique), Vol. VI and I, pls. XLVIII, L, and p. 108, fig. 63, 1. This does not refer to "orfèvrerie cloisonnée".

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¹ Marshall and Vogel, p. 181; Coomaraswamy, 1, p. 220.

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² A. S. I., A. R., 1923—24, p. 115.

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Thus, so far as its constituent elements are concerned, and apart from any question of style, there is comparatively little in Indian decorative art that is peculiar to India, and much that India shares with Western Asia.

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In view of the fact that the forms referred to appear in Indian art for the first time in the Maurya and Śuṅga periods and that there is good evidence of Achaemenid influence at this time, it has been not unusual to assume that the whole group of Western Asiatic and Persian motifs came into India in the Maurya period³. It must, however, be constantly borne in mind that a motif was not necessarily invented or borrowed at the date of its first appearance in permanent material; indeed, a first appearance in stone is almost tantamount to proof of an earlier currency in wood. No one, in fact, doubts the existence of a pre-Maurya Indian art of sculpture and architecture in wood, clay modelling, ivory carving, cutting of hard stone, glass, textiles and metal work, and this art must have embraced an extensive ensemble of decorative motifs, ranging from lines and dots incised or painted on earthen pots and chank bangles to representations of the human figure. To suppose that the whole group of motifs of Western Asiatic aspect was introduced by Aśoka’s Persian craftsmen *en bloc*, would thus necessarily imply a belief in the existence of a lost pre-Maurya art of some strange and unknown kind. As a matter of fact, it would be fantastic to postulate the existence of any such art, and, in view of our knowledge of the continuous preservation of motifs, and the conservative character of Indian decorative art, it would be impossible to believe that it could have vanished without trace.

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³ According to Jouveau-Dubreuil, 1, vol. 1, p. 25, in the time of Darius. Cf. Kennedy, p. 283.

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All this amounts to proof that the themes and motifs of pre-Maurya art cannot have differed very greatly from those of Maurya and Śuṅga; fantastic animals, palmettes, rosettes, and bell capitals must have been common elements of the craftsman’s repertory under the Nandas as in the time of Aśoka. India, in centuries and perhaps millenniums B. C., was an integral part of an “Ancient East” that extended from the Mediterranean to the Ganges valley. In this ancient world there prevailed a common type of culture, which may well have had a continuous history extending upwards from the stone age. Some of its most widely distributed decorative, or more accurately speaking, symbolic motifs, such as the spiral and *svastika*, with certain phases of its mythology, such as the cults of Sun and Fire, may go back to that remote past; more sophisticated motifs and technical discoveries may have originated in any part of the area; a majority, perhaps in southern Mesopotamia¹, others in India or in Egypt.

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¹ Pottier, E., *Les Sumeriens et la Chaldée*, Rev. de l'art ancient et moderne, XXVII, 1910: "La Chaldée nous apparaît comme le reservoir d'ou les formules d'art les plus connues se sont deversées sur le mond entier"; and Rostovtzeff, pp. 192, 193, 237: "All these types spread far and wide, eastward, westward, and northward".

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The effect of these considerations is to withdraw India from its isolation; as a background to the existing art there is a "common early Asiatic art, which has left its uttermost ripple marks alike on the shores of Hellas, the extreme west of Ireland, Etruria, Phoenicia, Egypt, India, and China"². All that belongs to this phase of art is equally the common inheritance of Europe and Asia, and its various forms as they occur in India or elsewhere at various periods up to the present day are to be regarded as cognates rather than as borrowings.

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² Okakura, introduction. Cf. Marshall in A. S. I., A. R., 1923—24, p. 49, and de Morgan.