Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c8.27

c8.27

This extraordinary activity in building must have created a demand for skilled masons and sculptors much greater than India could supply; and, just as in later times Shah Jahan brought masons from Samarkand, Shiraz, and Baghdad, to assist in building the Taj Mahal, so doubtless Asoka imported similar craftsmen from the great cities of Western Asia. We can still recognise their handiwork in the magnificent monolithic pillars, some of which are fifty feet in height, and about fifty tons in weight, with which Asoka marked many of the sacred places of Buddhism. One of these, which has recently been unearthed at Sarnath, on the spot where Buddha preached his first sermon,¹ is a perfect specimen of the stone-mason’s and carver’s art, but purely Persian in style.