The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.312

v1.c7.312

Admitting, however, that Aśoka¹⁴ did somehow get a few master workmen from Greece, or from the Bactrian Greeks, we would ask, would not such people in the total absence of an indigenous style, reproduce the forms they were most familiar with? There can be only one answer to such a question; but the pillars shew that they are perfectly independent of Greek art of the 3rd, 4th, and the 5th centuries B.C. We find in them nothing of the Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian columns—nothing to recall to mind the genius of the great masters of architecture and sculpture. Their proportion, their bases, and their ornamentation are all different, and charcteristic of an original style, and a style which must have taken centuries before it was brought to the state of perfection in which we find it in the time of Aśoka.