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Maurya and Shunga Art (Maurya and Śuṅga Art)

Aśokan pillars and capitals, Maurya court and folk art, yakṣa figures, Bharhut, Sanchi, Bodhgaya and Śuṅga terracottas; plates.

Language
English
Author
Niharranjan Ray
Extent
319 passages, 35,020 words
Text
complete digital text
Source
archive.org · Calcutta: University of Calcutta 1945; scan on archive.org, OCR Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite; chapters and sections… · In copyright (Niharranjan Ray †1981); freely available on archive.org — shown with credit and a link to that…

Contents

Text

Front matter

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MAURYA AND ŚUNGA ART

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BY NIHAR-RANJAN RAY M. A. (Cal.), D. LETT. & PHIL. (Leiden), F. L. A UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA

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UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA

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University of Calcutta BAGISVARI LECTURES First Series, March, 1945.

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First Edition 1945

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Text Printed by Mr. S. C. Das, at the Alexandra Printing Works, 9A, Haripal Lane, Calcutta; Blocks executed and plates printed by the Indian Photo-engraving Co., Calcutta. Published by Mr. Dinabandhu Ganguli, B.A. on behalf of the University of Calcutta.

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To SRIYUKTA SYAMAPRASAD MUKHOPADHYAYA

Contents

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I. INTRODUCTORY pp. 1—8

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II. SOCIAL BACKGROUND ” 8—24

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III. MAURYAN COLUMNS ” 24—35

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IV. MAURYAN ANIMAL FIGURES ” 35—47

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V. ALLEGED MAURYAN SCULPTURES ” 48—55

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VI. MAURYAN CAVES ” 55—59

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VII. CHARACTER OF MAURYA ART ” 59—63

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VIII. ASOKAN IDEOLOGY & ŚUNGA BACKGROUND ” 63—75

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IX. FORMAL QUALITIES OF ŚUNGA ART ” 75—84

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X. SOCIAL COMPONENTS OF ŚUNGA ART ” 84—90

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XI. BARHUT AND BODHGAYA ” 90—93

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XII. CHARACTER OF ŚUNGA ART ” 93—94

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DESCRIPTION OF PLATES ” 95—104

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ABBREVIATIONS ” 105

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NOTES ” 106—109

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ” 110—111

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INDEX ” 112—116

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ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA ” 117

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PLATES Figs 1—33

Preface

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The art of the time when the Mauryas and Śuṅgas were the paramount rulers in our country is a subject that has often been studied; indeed, the monumental pillars of Aśoka and the elaborate bas-reliefs on the gates and railings of Barhut and Bodh-gaya are today some of the more important objects of Indian art with which those interested are most familiar. The choice of such a familiar subject for fresh and separate treatment in the form of a monograph requires therefore a word of explanation.

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Let me at the outset make it clear that I am not bringing to light any fresh find, nor am I trying to say anything striking by original as to the character of form of the art of the two periods under review. My aim is to read this art in the larger context of life and hence as a related phenomenon, i.e. as one of the aspects of our cultural life in that distant past. Whilst recognising the identity and integrity of this art existing independently from other sociological phenomena, my aim is to correlate it with the latter, if possible. My main pre-occupation is therefore not only to study the character of form and technique of these two phases and aspects of our art, but also to study the causes and circumstances that conditioned the life of this art. Frankly, my method is sociological. I have therefore taken into consideration the current tastes and preferences, individual and collective, the social background, the political circumstances, the trend of thought, ethnic components, root forms, traditions, influences, history of technique etc., to elucidate the coming into being of what we call Maurya and Śuṅga art. I am not ashamed to say that archaeology dominates, since I hold that archaeological discipline is yet necessary in any consideration of the early and classical art of our county. We have yet to unearth a huge corpus of art objects, elucidate their chronology, sift the hundreds of literary documents, discover the reign-ideas, bring to light the historical episodes and do so many other things before we can review the artistic achievements of our ancestors with any profit, and trace the influences and counter-influences, the genesis, growth, fulfilment and dissipation of forms and techniques. A sneering attitude towards archaeology at this stage of our art-history is therefore, in my opinion, not only idle luxury but irresponsible thinking as well.

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Chronologically, the art of the Maurya and Śuṅga periods is closely related; yet no two phases and aspects of art could be so different from each other—different in their conception of form as well as in technique which made that form realisable in stone. I have tried to find out the causes and circumstances to which this difference, in my opinion, has been due. I have further tried to fix their place not only in the history of Indian art but in the history of Indian life as well. This, as far as I know, has not hitherto been attempted.

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I am glad to acknowledge with thanks and gratitude the debt I owe to Prof. B. M. Barua but for whose very erudite elucidation and interpretation of Asokan epigraphs many of these pages could not have been written, to Dr. B. C. Law for his kindness extended generously to all my literary and academic undertakings, to Prof. Shahid Suhrawardy and Prof. Stella Kramrisch who patiently sat with me whilst I read out long extracts to them from my manuscript, to the Archæological Survey of India for having kindly permitted me to reproduce the photographs in their possession, to the University of Calcutta for kindly allowing me the privilege of reading out the larger part of the book as my first course of Bagisvari Lectures on Indian Art, and to my young friends Mr. Sudhirranjan Das and Mr. Sukeshchandra Chandra for occasional help in preparing the Ms. for the press, reading the proofs, and preparing the Index.

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The University, Calcutta.

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Niharranjan Ray

I. Introductory

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Recent archæological discoveries and historical researches have pushed the history of India back to atleast three thousand years before the birth of Christ. But the first organised art activity in India in bigger scale and durable material that we have any definite knowledge of even to this day and of which dateable examples have come down to us in any recognisable number belong to the period of the Mauryas. The chalcolithic age to which belongs the civilisation of the Indus valley has bequeathed to us relics, few in number but varied in subject and treatment, that may safely be said to belong to the domain of high art with a long artistic tradition and experience behind it. Indeed, the art represented by the reliefs on the seals and figure sculptures in the round found at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and other sites in the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and further north and east is already highly developed, sophisticated and conscious, and expresses most frankly and significantly the culture-ideology of a people urban in upbringing, highly sophisticated in the luxury of living, and probably industrial and feudal in socio-economic organisation. Like the civilisation itself its art also had already reached the creative climax of a tradition. Into the relation of this art with the art of the contemporary civilised world it is not the place to enter; but it must needs be told that this art inspite of its affinities with contemporary Mediterranean art has its own essential qualities and its own character of form that link it with the art of India of the historical period.¹ Yet the fact remains that the art of the Indus valley is still largely an unknown factor in so far as it remains chronologically unrelated and unexplained and nothing definite is known of what happened along the arrow of time between the final phase of the Indus valley civilisation and the civilisation that flourished in the Ganges valley more than two thousand years later.

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The earliest that the Ganges Valley is alleged to have offered to us in the shape and form of what may be called an art object is a small gold tablet representing a naked woman standing on her legs in symmetrical rigidity, with exaggerated hips and sexual organs, heavy and clumsy ornaments and in a rigidly angular composition.² Dug out of a tomb near Lauriya, it was identified by Bloch, the explorer, as the iconic representation of the Earth goddess, and was ascribed by him to about the 8th or 7th century B.C. There can hardly be any doubt that such images in metal, and perhaps also in clay, served as fetishistic symbols. There are passages in the Ṛig Veda and later also in the Gṛihya Sūtras which can be interpreted to suggest that figures of gods and animals were fashioned in metal and clay for such purposes. A small gold tablet similar to that found at Lauriya and a small gold figure, forming part of the relics from the ruins of the Piprahwa Stūpa evidently Buddhistic, and belonging to a period not earlier that of the Mauryas,³ reveal the same motive and treatment as those of the Lauriya tablet, so that the latter can hardly be ascribed to so early a period as has been done. Some of the oldest terracotta pieces recovered by Marshall from the ruins of Bhita also seem to belong more or less to this category⁴; their motive, if not their treatment, is the same, so that all these objects my be taken to be typical representations of a primitive phase of imagination and expression centring round fetishistic beliefs. They are not definitely the products of any organised and conscious art movement in any considerable scale, though it must be admitted that primitive faiths and beliefs may have helped and favoured the development of sculptural and architectural art in India at a later stage of history. In any case, the Piprahwa and Lauriya gold pieces seem to be artistic representations of fetishistic symbols outside the Maurya court and represent the popular tradition of art that was later on to find its fullest expression in the reliefs of Barhut.

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That this was indeed the case is fully borne out by early Buddhist and Jaina texts and supported by early Buddhist sculptural reliefs that reveal the flourishing existence, particularly in Middle and Eastern India, of a primitive religion that indulged in the worship of such symbols as the ‘chaitya’ which was either a holy tree or groves of trees ( rukkhachetiya, vanachetiya, ārāma-chetiya etc. ), and not unfrequently these trees were the abode of gods or spirits known as vṛikshadevatās, yakshas, etc. Another important symbol that received worship was the ‘stūpa’, a hemispherical tumulus, either votive or commemorative. All such objects and places of primitive worship were enclosed for protection with a railing which must have given the people some scope for the play of their artistic and decorative instincts.⁵ A third object that also seems to have been an important element in the primitive religion of Middle and Eastern India was the animal standard, the ‘dhvaja-stambha’ of later Indian literature, i.e. posts or pillars crowned by animals considered sacred and therefore worshipped by primitive peoples. This trait of primitive religion was not particularly characteristic of India alone, but was equally potent in Babylonia and Assyria as well as in ancient Greece. Later Brahmanical mythology knows of such standards or ‘stambhas’ of at least three different animal-gods, namely the Garuḍa, the Vṛisha and the Makara, the ‘vāhanas’ of Viṣṇu, Śiva, Gaṅgā and Kandarpa respectively. Sometimes the animal was substituted by certain trees considered sacred, the Kalpadruma or the ‘wishing tree’, for example, and the palm tree represented by its crowning cluster of leaves.⁶ It was evidently from such early specimens of primitive animal standards made of impermanent materials like wood and bamboo etc. that Aśoka seems to have derived the inspiration of erecting monumental pillars crowned by sacred animals.

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But of such objects of worship before the days of Aśoka Maurya we have hardly any remains extant, nor of the ‘yakṣa-devatās’ or spirits referred to in a general way or specifically by name in early Buddhist and Jaina texts. Attempts have been made on epigraphic reasons to identify the two statues in the round from Patna in reddish-grey sand stone of the Chunar region and bearing ‘chauris’ as those of yakṣas; indeed behind the shoulder of one of these statues, on the scarf is a short inscription, paleographically assignable to abour the first century A.D., that may be read as yakh (o) sa (?) Vatanaṃdī. That they are monumental sculptural representations of yakṣas there can hardly be any doubt, though persistent attempts were once made to identify them as statues of two kings of the Śaiśunāga dynasty of Magadha.⁷ This later theory is no longer seriously pressed; but it is still generally held that they belong stylistically to the later phase of Mauryan art. I shall try to show later on that the so-called Mauryan polish which is the rock-argument on which the assumption is based can hardly be considered sufficient for their being labelled as Mauryan, and that not only paleographically but stylistically as well they cannot belong to a period of art earlier than that represented at Sanchi and in the early primitives of Mathura.

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The fact remains therefore that we have no examples extant of either sculpture or architecture that can definitely be labelled chronologically as pre-Mauryan. Indeed, all evidences suggest that whatever specimens of these two branches of visual art we know are directly the products of the Mauryya court. Except two pillars that stylistically may be ascribed to a date anterior to that of Aśoka, all the rest belong definitely to the latter's reign along with the animal figures that crown them or exist independently. The description of the city of Pāṭaliputra and of the royal palace we read of in the accounts of classical writers like Megasthenes, Arrian and Strabo and the excavations at the site of the old city by Waddel and Spooner⁸ to which we shall turn at a later stage may be taken to suggest that Chandragupta, the first Maurya, may have been responsible for the original initiative in the general planning and execution of the building of the city as well as of the royal palace. But there can be little doubt that Bindusāra and Aśoka, particularly the latter, added considerably to the original lay out and the buildings. The Maurya Pillared Hall and the stupendous buildings remains of which were laid bare by Spooner may have presumably been built by Aśoka himself, since their essential ideology and conception agree so remarkably well with all that we already know of the aims, ideals, motives and general ideological design of that great benevolent autocrat. Such large designs executed with almost imperial thoroughness can for all that we know be associated with his name alone. Of other architectural remains that can definitely be associated with the Maurya dynasty are a few cave-dwellings dedicated by Aśoka and his grandson Daśaratha for the use of the monks of the Ājīvika sect. The more important remains of Mauryan art may on proven grounds be said to include the remains of the royal palace and city of Pāṭaliputra, a monolithic rail at Sarnath, the excavated chaitya-halls or cave-dwellings in the Barabar-Nagarjuni group of hills in Gaya, the non-edict-bearing and edict-bearing pillars with their capitals, and the front half of an elephant carved out in the round from a live rock at Dhauli in Orissa⁹.

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A few characteristics are common to all these sculptural and architectural remains. They are all monumental in conception and design, and inordinately fine, orderly, thorough and precise in execution. Moreover, with the exception of the remains of the royal palace and city-buildings of Pāṭaliputra, all of them were executed in hard grey sand stone of more or less big dimensions, always very finely chiselled and highly polished to a glossiness that has hardly any parallel in India at any other period of history, and in the world except ancient Iran. And thirdly, all of them were reared up directly under the shadow of the royal throne of the Mauryas, Aśoka and his grandson associating themselves with most of them. We are thus confronted here with an historical phenomenon that calls for an explanation. Here we are face to face with a period in ancient Indian history when a royal dynasty with imperial ambition and outlook suddenly discards wood and bamboo, and perhaps also brick, ivory, metal, and clay, and takes to the employment of stone as the material *par excellence* for monumental sculpture and architecture, and that this new material is handled with such perfect ease and mastery as to suggest that the art of hard and large-size stone-cutting was as it were already long in practice. Except those carved out of live rock, all removable pieces were worked out of grey sand stone quarried at Chunar; the Mauryan columns are all carved out of this material, and it should be remembered that these huge columns are distributed over a very wide area, between Delhi in the west, Basarh in the east and Sanchi in the south. Most certainly the huge resources of the state made available to the artists, rendered possible the conception, planning and execution in such large and gigantic proportions. But royal will and state resources alone cannot explain the sudden transformation from wood, sun-dried brick, clay, ivory and metal to stone, or from fine workmanship and exquisite finish of ivory and metal work to bold and rounded work in stone of huge dimensions. It is possible to postulate that similar bold and large scale work was long in practice in wood in pre-Mauryan days, and what the Maurya emperors did was only to initiate the artists and art-guilds into the use of stone and translate their traditional skill in terms of a new material. Such an explanation is certainly admissible. One has only to read through the description of the city and royal palace of Pāṭaliputra left by classical scholars,¹⁰ and examine the design and execution of many an architectural element of the Maurya, Śuṅga and other early Indian monuments, e.g. the pillars, the railings, the gates, the chaitya-facades, etc. and be convinced of the force of the argument.¹¹ But the very fact that stone henceforward became the most important material for Indian plastic art is by itself significant; equally significant is that stone sculpture when it first comes to view in India during the Maurya period is already the expression of a civilised, sophisticated and fully developed art that had generations of artistic effort, experience and tradition behind it, that it is a work in the round, that it exists by itself and is borne by its own volume and strength, and that it has an inherent technical and psychological character that the carpenter's art fails to explain and account for. Indeed, past artistic tradition and the art of the wood, clay, ivory, mineral stone and metal worker in howsoever large a scale and with whatever technical skill and efficiency cannot fully explain the art-tradition Mauryan sculptures represent, or the technical skill and efficiency of the Mauryan sculptor who worked in stone of huge and heavy proportions, and the atmosphere the sculptures themselves breathe.

II. Social Background

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Any attempt at an explanation of the phenomenon referred to above must take into account the state of artistic effort and activities in India itself during the centuries immediately preceeding that of the Mauryas; i.e. during the period dominated by the Haryaṅka, the Śaiśunāga and the Nanda dynasties on the one hand, and the place of India, especially Northern India, in the entire culture-complex of the early Asiatic world, on the other. It will also be necessary to consider at the same time the historical and cultural forces that were at work at the Mauryan court which was directly responsible for Mauryan art.

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The Brahmanical sūtras and the Buddhist jātakas reflect to a very great extent the art and culture of Northern India during the centuries of Haryaṅka, Śaiśunāga and Nanda domination. Storeyed buildings, presumably of wood and brick, were already widely known and mention is made of round and square huts perhaps of wood and bamboo. An advanced knowledge of the use of metals like tin, lead, silver, copper and iron shaped and formed into objects meant for various domestic and other purposes is already known from later Vedic texts, and the jātakas reveal that there were eighteen different kinds of ‘śilpas’ or arts and crafts including carpentery, smithery, leather-dressing and painting. Metal workers in general were probably known by the word ‘kammāra’ ( sans.

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Karmakāra ), and there are definite evidences to show that these artists and craftsmen were organised into guilds. Localisation of certain industrial crafts also took place to the extent that an entire village or a particular locality in a town came to be designated according to the craft pursued there. The jātakas also afford a more or less vivid picture of contemporary city and village life, villages with scattered huts made of wood, bamboo and reed, cities with roads and lanes lined with buildings of brick and wood, all set off against the background of an agricultural, industrial and commercial life in small scale and within narrow proportions.¹² With the exception of certain stories in the Mahābhārata, there is nothing else to suggest that the canvas of contemporary life was large enough and that it was conceived in any magnificent and monumental scale. Tribal and primitive was indeed the character of the social psychology of Northern India during these centuries. This tribal and primitive outlook is also fully in evidence in the remains of the old city of Rājagṛiha with its walls and remains of dwellings built of rough cyclopean masonry¹³ which is the one definite architectural example that can be said to belong to pre-Mauryan times.

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But a slow and steady widening of the tribal and primitive outlook was being effected in the political sphere. Already in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa we hear of such sacrifices as the ‘Rājasūya’ and the ‘Aindramahābhisheka’, of ‘Sārvabhauma’ kings, of paramount rule and of all-encompassing sovereignty. The same political conception of ‘rāja sārvabhauma’ is repeated in Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra, and that of ‘rāja chakkavatti’ in early Buddhist and Jaina texts.¹⁴ In reality however the normal political condition of Northern India till the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. was not that of an empire of any considerable extent under a ‘sārvabhauma’ monarch but it was that of separate small and independent states and kingdoms under a king or tribal leader. It was only towards the third quarter of the fourth century B. C. that the ideal was partially achieved in the person of Mahāpadmananda who has been referred to in the Purāṇas as ‘sarvarājochchhettā’, ‘sarvakshatrāntaka nṛipaḥ’ and ‘ekarāṭ’, the supreme monarch, and one of his sons, the last of the dynasty, as the powerful monarch of the Prasioi and the Gangaridai, in the accounts of classical historians. Politically, India was thus slowly but steadily growing out of its tribal psychological outlook which was sure eventually to influence the social and cultural outlook of the leading sections of the people.

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Whether the evolution of such a political outlook was the outcome of natural historical process or was directly or indirectly conditioned by India’s contact with the contemporary West-Asiatic world, is difficult to say. In any case the chronological and historical background is significant and is worth consideration. Already in pre-historic times, the Indus Valley civilisation formed a part of the civilisation that extended to ancient Sumer; much later, the civilisation represented by the Ṛigveda was but a cognate of that represented by the Avestā. There is no reason to assume that this intimate relation of India with Iran and the ancient Asiatic West lapsed at any time during the centuries that followed. Indeed, from about 800 B. C. almost continuous contact of Aryanised India with Iran can be traced back to or inferred from various sources, literary and archaeological. In the sixth century B. C. part of Northern India went under the political domination of Iran, and gradually the Indus came to form the eastern boundary of the wide Iranian empire of Darius; indeed this part of India came to be politically organised into the 20th satrapy of that empire.¹⁵ Darius describes himself in his inscriptions as ‘Kshayathiyanam Kshayathiya’, the king of kings, the great king;¹⁶ he was in reality a ‘sārvabhauma’ monarch of the old Indian conception, an ‘ekarāt’ like Mahāpadmananda. Indeed the Achaemenid dynasty was the first to evolve and give reality to the idea of imperial suzerainty which a century later was partially achieved by the Nandas, but fully by the Mauryas.¹⁷ Certainly no contemporary borrowing can at once be postulated, but it is likely that both India and Iran participated in a common historic process.

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This is more evident in the domain of art and general culture. Indeed early Indian art can be viewed and understood fully only against the background of the age-old but very potent and effective Indo-Sumerian and Indo-Iranian contacts maintained through long centuries. In Maurya, Śuṅga, Āndhra and Kuṣāṇa art, there is a rich treasure of art and decorative motifs, ornamentations, devices and patterns that we meet with for the first time and which at once suggest “parallels in Sumerian, Hittite, Assyrian, Mykenean, Cretan, Trojan, Lykian, Phoenician, Achaemenid and Scythian cultures.” Coomaraswamy gives a long list of such common elements and technical analogies, and finally argues that “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.” It is difficult to disagree with Coomaraswamy when further he says :

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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 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.”¹⁸

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Apart from India's forming an integral part of an 'Ancient East' and sharing in a common cultural heritage from very early times, there is more or less definite evidence of intimate cultural contact of India with Iran in particular from about the eighth and seventh centuries B. C. The North-west and the Indus Valley forming a part of the empire of Darius made contacts with Iran easier still. This intimate contact must have been responsible for certain elements in Buddhist and later Brahmanical mythology, tradition, worship and iconography, especially those connected with the cults of the Sun and the Fire.¹⁹ It was also responsible for the origin and evolution of the Kharoshṭhī script in about the fifth or fourth century B. C. An Aramaic inscription belonging to about the fourth century B. C. has actually been found at Taxila.²⁰ The Haryaṅkas, the Śaiśunāgas and the Nandas must have more or less felt the pressure of this contact, but since their dominions lay far away from the regions where presumably the effects of the impact of the two civilisations were directly felt, Eastern India was perhaps only indirectly touched by Iranian contacts.

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With the coming of the Mauryas to power on the throne of Pāṭaliputra, with the building up of an all-India empire by Chandragupta extending upto modern Afghanisthan and therefore touching almost what had once been the heart of Achaemenid power and culture, with the establishment of intimate friendly relations with contemporary Hellenistic powers and intimate contacts of Maurya kings and court with Greek political and cultural representatives from Graeco-Bactrian courts and kingdoms, the situation however took a new turn. The Achaemenid empire had long gone to dust and India had ceased to form a part of that empire. In 330 B. C. Alexander the Great overthrew the once mighty Persian Empire, but in the process of consolidating his conquest the Greek conqueror felt the overpowering influence of Achaemenian imperialism and Achaemenian art and culture to both of which he fell an easy prey. Plutarch has left us a long and vivid description of how Alexander behaved himself at Persepolis and how he worked for a fusion of the cultures of Greece and Iran of the Medo-Achaemenid monarchs. Donned in the robes of Iranian monarchs he used to sit on the throne of Darius under a golden canopy. He himself married Darius's daughter Statira, and married his Greek friends to Iranian ladies; one of these friends was Seleukus, later known as Seleukus Nikator, who married Apama, the daughter of Spitamenes. Not satisfied with having simply adopted somewhat the Persian mode of dress, Alexander, says Plutarch, "accommodated himself more than ever to the manner of the Asiatics, and at the same time persuaded them to adopt some of the Macedonian fashions; for by a mixture of both he thought a union might be promoted, much better than by force, and his authority maintained even when he was at a distance. For the same reason he elected thirty thousand (Persian) boys and gave them masters to instruct them in Grecian literature as well as train them to arms in the Macedonian manner."²¹

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The same process seems to have been fully at work in the realm of art. Colonial Hellenistic art was slowly coming under the influence of Persian art, specially of Persian motifs, patterns and designs on the one hand, while Persian art itself began to feel the pressure of Ionian and Hellenistic influences onwards from the fifth century B. C.²² This pressure became active during and after the Achaemenid period, so that when the Mauryas came into intimate contact with the colonial Greeks of Western Asia, both Achaemenid and Hellenistic art-traditions had become heavily touched by each other.

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After the withdrawal of the Macedonian army of Alexander, and the establishment of an alliance *jus connubii* of Chandragupta Maurya with Seleukus, the Mauryas came into very intimate friendly relations with the Seleukid Greek houses, and this relation continued from generation to generation. Besides contracting a matrimonial alliance Chandragupta repeatedly received Megasthenes, an officer from Arachosia, as an ambassador from Seleukus; is reported to have sent Seleukus some strange Indian drugs presumably through his own envoy, and is further said to have been used to offer sacrifices in Hellenic manner to Alexander's altars on the Hyphasis. The ceremonial at the court of this king described by classical writers also reveal Achaemenian influence.²³ His son Bindusāra had in his court a Greek envoy, Deimachus of Plataea, sent by Antiochus Soter, son of Seleukus. Bindusāra also like his father seems to have been a Hellenophile; he wrote back to Antiochus requesting him to buy and send on to him sweet wine, dried figs and a Greek sophist. From Antiochus came the reply: "we shall send you dried figs and sweet wine, but it is not lawful in Greece to sell a sophist." Diodorus speaks of a Greek author Iamboulus by name who found his way to the king of Palibothra, and this king of Palibothra, presumably Bindusāra or atleast one of the first three Maurya monarchs, "is credited with having a great love for the Grecians." The court of Bindusāra or of his son was visited by a Greek envoy Dicnysius sent by Ptolemy (II) Philadelphos, King of Egypt, while Deimachus was another Greek ambassador from the king of Syria who presented his credentials to Bindusāra. If the evidence of Dion Chrysostom is to be believed, the Indians sang the poetry of Homer which was translated into Indian language and Indian mode of expression. Aśoka’s friendly relations with the Yavanas or the Greek states of Western Asia and Egypt are much to well-known; the world that he claims to have contacted in pursuance of his policy of ‘Dhammavijaya’ was pre-eminently this Hellenistic world; he arranged for the medical treatment of men and cattle among others in the dominions of Antiochus Theos and his neighbours; he despatched ‘dūtas’ or envoys to the realms of the five Greek frontagers to initiate or encourage various works of piety and public utility, to inculcate the principles of Dhamma, and further to assure his frontagers of his sincere desire to respect their territorial integrity, and of his solicitude and good will.

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Both Megasthenes and Kauṭilya refer to a state department run and maintained specifically for the purpose of looking after foreigners²⁴ who evidently were quite numerous not only in the capital city of Pāṭaliputra but in other provincial capitals and trade centres as well. There can hardly be any doubt that these foreigners were mostly colonial Greeks and a very large majority of them were merchants and businessmen. Indeed in the third century B. C. a caravan high way ran from Taxila via Kandahar, Persepolis and Susa to Seleukeia on the Tigris, while another old main road ran via Kandahar, Heerat, Hekatompylos, Ekbatana and Seleukeia and was joined by the Taxila-Kabul-Bactria route.²⁵ Taxila, it is well-known, was the seat of an important Maurya province, and from here a great high way ran direct to connect Pāṭaliputra with the Hellenic East. Besides, there was also a coastal sea-borne trade route to Seleukeia along the Persian Gulf and up the Tigris, and to Egypt following the coastal line. It is this trade route that explains the Aramaic inscription referred to above and dateable in the fourth century B. C. It was along this route also that foreigners including Greek envoys, traders, travellers, artists and craftsmen must have flocked to Maurya India in such numbers as to oblige the state to maintain a department to look after their comfort and well-being. This intimate contact indeed explains such finds as the fragmentary handle of a terracotta vase showing Alexander’s head in lion’s skin recovered from Taxila,²⁶ or random finds from Sarnath, Basarh and the Patna region of terracotta pieces of distinctive Hellenistic appearance or with definite Hellenistic motifs and designs.²⁷ That they belong probably to a later date does not minimise the importance of the very intimate relations the Maurya court maintained with the Hellenic East; rather they point to the fact that even after the decline and downfall of the Mauryas parts of India continued to remain in touch with the Hellenistic world. Was it not that within a quarter of a century after the death of Aśoka a Greek army crossed the Hindukush and penetrated into the east as far as Sāketa ( in Ayodhyā ), the Pañchāla country, Mathurā and Pāṭaliputra ?

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The phil-Hellenism of the Maurya kings and court is indeed beyond doubt, and it must have been their intimate relation with the Hellenistic East that also brought them into an indirect contact with the art and culture of the Achaemenids. The grandiose and magnificent monuments of the Achaemenid monarchs had still been standing when the Mauryas came to exercise all-India suzerainty and Maurya art was making its appearance. Certain Achaemenian forms and motifs had presumably already migrated to the Punjab and the Indus Valley during the Achaemenian occupation of the region.

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Excavations at the Bhir mound at Taxila long ago yielded from the pre-Hellenistic strata a scaraboid of steatite exhibiting a winged stag which is reminiscent of similar objects of Achaemenian origin.²⁸ "The Indian punch-marked silver coinage struck on the Persian standard represented perhaps the Achaemenian coinage for India."²⁹ But even after the extinction of Achaemenian power importation of Achaemenian art objects to India seems to have continued. Curtius, Diodorous and Arrian state that Alexander presented to the king of Taxila among other things a large number of gold and silver vessels and an enormous quantity of Babylonian and Persian embroideries from the treasury of old Persian monarchs.³⁰ It has also been pointed out that a few minor antiquities found in the upper strata of the Bhir mound excavations "reflect the influence of Achaemenian art." Among these four bangles of thin beaten gold with their heads terminating in lion's heads and a few fragments of pottery from the side of a vase decorated with the conventional leaf design and reminiscent of the capitals of well-known Aśoka pillars, are particularly noteworthy. Moreover, a polished sandstone head from Sarnath wearing a crenellated crown, the method of wearing the waist cloth without the 'kachchha' as we find in the two Patna 'yaksha' statues in the Indian Museum and the coiled armlets of the same figures inevitably recall Achaemenian parallels.³¹ It is evident that the trade routes referred to above opened up avenues through which Maurya India came to acquire more direct and intimate contact with Medo-Achaemenian art and culture, perhaps through Greek intermediaries.

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But the more important evidence of Achaemenian cultural influence on the Maurya court and Maurya cultural ideology is afforded by the accounts of the city and royal palace of Pāṭaliputra left by classical authors evidently following Megasthenes and by the actual remains of the same city and palace unearthed by Waddell and Spooner.³² We have it in Strabo that the city of Palibothra was situated at the confluence of the Ganges and the Erannoboas ( Hiraṇyavāha, the modern Son ); it was 80 stadia in length and 15 in breadth and was of the shape of a parallelogram. The city was surrounded by a wooden wall pierced with loop-holes for the discharge of arrows, crowned with 560 towers and provided with 60 gates. In sumptuousness and magnificence according to Strabo, Pāṭaliputra compared very favourably with Susa and Ekbatana. Waddell’s exacavations actually laid bare the remains of what had been once the city wall, and Spooner later brought to light remains of huge wooden buildings at Bulandibagh and Kumrahar, both near Patna. The remains of one of these buildings are of particular significance—those of a pillared hall in which stone columns were employed to support the roof. Of the eighty pillars that had once stood on a wooden platform and supported a wooden roof Spooner was able to discover the entire lower part of at least one in almost perfect condition ; it is more or less like an Asokan pillar, smooth, highly polished and made of grey Chunar sand-stone.

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Writing about Indian towns Arrian says, “All their towns which are down beside the rivers or the sea are made of wood ; for towns built of brick would never hold out for any length of time with the rains on the one hand, and on the other, the rivers which rise above their banks and spread a sheet of water over the plains. But the towns which are built on elevated places out of reach, these are built of brick and clay.” The excavations of Waddell and Spooner admirably confirm what we are told by Strabo, Arrian and early Sanskrit and Pali writers, and constitute one more proof of the fact that before the employment of stone for building purposes, wood was generally the only material for even the most sumptuous and magnificent buildings. Spooner’s exacavations however revealed for the first time that stone was employed for building purposes in at least one building of the Maurya royal city, and that it was a pillared hall. That the magnificent palaces of Pāṭaliputra reminded Strabo who evidently followed Megasthenes, of the palaces of Susa and Ekbatana is not without significance when it is remembered that the Maurya Pillared Hall reminded Spooner of the famous Hall of Hundred Columns erected at Persepolis by Darius the Great.

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“Whereas no other structure of really early date in ancient India disclosed”, says Spooner, “an arrangement of pillars in square bays over the whole floor the hall at Kumrahar did show this otherwise unparalleled arrangement, and this was identical with the arrangement of the pillars in the Achaemenian Hall. The columns themselves moreover showed a technique in their polished surface which is not only known to have been un-Indian, and outside the line of Indian architectural development, but which again is identical with Persepolitan workmanship.” Apart from the question of the origin and morphology of the Asokan columns, it is not unlikely that the Maurya Pillared Hall owed its inspiration and general design to the Hall of Hundred columns erected by Darius. We have it on the authority of classical writers that Chandragupta’s palace at Pāṭaliputra consisted of halls whose gilded pillars were adorned with golden vines and silver birds; indeed fragments of golden vines have been discovered in the exacavations at Kumrahar. We know that the halls of the palaces of Ekbatana had gilded pillars constructed of cedar and cypress, and golden vines of the pillars invariably recall the vines hanging over the couch of Darius, a gift of the Lydian Pythias and perhaps of Ionian workmanship.

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It is difficult to say whether the Mauryan Pillared Hall at Pāṭaliputra was the conception of Chandragupta himself or one of his successors—personally I think it was built at the direction of Aśoka—, but there can be no doubt that one of the first three Maurya emperors was responsible for it, nor is it unlikely that "this adoption of the Persepolitan style of building at Pāṭaliputra was not the normal result of the contact of the Achaemenian and Indian sculptors, but was due to conscious adoption of the plan of the Achaemenian Hall of Public Audience by the Mauryan emperor ( Aśoka ) as a part of the paraphernalia of his imperialism..."³³

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It has been argued with some force that Mauryan imperialism as revealed in the inscriptions of Aśoka was largely influenced by the imperial ideology of the Hellenistic and Achaemenian monarchs.³⁴ This may not be altogether unlikely, but be that as it may the fact remains that the inscriptions themselves indicate the extent to which Aśoka was indebted to his great Achaemenian predecessor Darius, not only for the idea of making his royal edicts known throughout his empire but also for the form of the inscriptions themselves.³⁵ At the end of the Susian version of the Behistun inscription of Darius we have the following :

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"( Thus ) Saith Darius, the king : By the grace of Auramazda I made inscriptions in another fashion...such as was not formerly...and it was written and I...then I sent the same inscriptions into all lands, and the people..."

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The duplicate copies were evidently written on leather or brick. This was also the arrangement made by Aśoka for the circulation of his edicts ( R. E. XXIV ; Kalinga Edict I ; P. E. VII).

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The very idea of recording royal orders and directions on such permanent material as rocks (and pillars) seems to have been inspired by Achaemenian practice. In respect of the form of the Asokan inscriptions Senart long ago pointed out their strong resemblance with that of the inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings. The edicts of Aśoka begin with the usual formula ‘Devānampiya Piyadasi evamāha’ which according to Senart, “is an absolutely isolated example in Indian epigraphy... In the entire series of the inscriptions of the Achaemenides, from Darius to Artaxerexes Ochus, the phrase ‘thatey Darayavaush Kshayathiya’, ‘thus saith the king Darius’, or its equivalent ‘thatey Kshayarsha’ etc., inevitably forms the preamble of each of the proclamations. In both cases, this phrase in the third person is immediately succeeded by the use of the first person, and we are still further justified in drawing attention to this curious fact that again in both cases the same word—‘dipi’, ‘lipi’—is used to designate the inscriptions, and that, as we have seen, we are led to admit, on altogether independent grounds, that the Indian form of the word was originally borrowed from Persian.” One may not fully agree with Senart in his contention, since the ‘Arthaśāstra’ ascribes a similar formula for royal proclamations, and early Buddhist texts make constant use of such archaic and conventional phrases as ‘Tathāgato āho’, ‘evamvādi Mahāsamaṇo’ etc. Indeed one has to agree with Prof. Barua when he points out that the Asokan formula probably originated from the Indian literary convention that can be traced to even such Upanishadic phrases as ‘hovācha Yājñavalkya’, ‘evamāhur’ ‘manīśiṇaḥ’ etc. But the fact remains that the whole character of Asokan epigraphs including their form has an undeniable family likeness with Achaemenian inscriptions, and has nothing to connect them with later Indian epigraphy. Aśoka's peculiar way of exhorting people to follow the laws of Dhamma also seems to have been adopted from Achaemenian practice initiated by Darius in his Behistun and Naksh i-Rustam inscriptions³⁶.

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Two important facts emerge. First, that whatever extant remains we can lay our hands on as definitely belonging to the Maurya period are products of the Maurya court, i.e. they were worked out by orders of the Maurya monarchs and perhaps also under their direct supervision. Secondly, that this court and its presiding lords were all ardent Hellenophiles and was largely under the influence of Achaemenian art and culture at the same time. It is to this second factor that we can ascribe the fixation of Indian art in permanent materials during this period for the first time and the handling of stone for sculptural and architectural purposes with perfect ease and efficiency. At the same time it has to be recognised that there existed in India a pre-Mauryan art mainly practised in wood and partly in sundried brick, clay, ivory, metal and mineral stone. Admittedly this art could hardly conceive life and things in huge proportions and large dimensions. Tribal and primitive outlook circumscribed the vision of the artists and craftsmen who must also have been handicapped by the very nature of the materials they used. But this art happened to be the repository of certain patterns, designs and motifs that India shared in common with the rest of the early Asiatic world.

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For the rest, we know from Megasthenes, Kauṭilya and the inscriptions of Aśoka himself that the Maurya administration was a highly centralised one supported and strengthened by a tight bureaucracy, and the Maurya monarch nothing short of a benevolent autocrat. Aśoka’s ‘Dhammavijaya’ was more an imperial policy than a religious missionary movement and his moral exhortations to his people had almost the force of law behind them. He had even gone to the length of regulating the social and religious life of his people according to his conception of Dhamma. It must also be taken into account that Aśoka, if one has to go by what he himself says in R. E. I, IV and IX, was averse to popular demonstrations of religion as well as to certain kinds of ‘samājas’ or festive gatherings and to auspicious rites and rituals performed by the ordinary people, particularly by the women-folk. It is clear further that his Dhamma was nothing but an abstract code of certain ethical principles of more or less universal recognition, and that his methods for the propagation of his Dhamma had almost the force of law behind them. To all these points I shall have occasion to turn at a later stage; here it would suffice to point out that the king and the court were both highly conscious of their power and their imperial glory; Aśoka’s inscriptions breathe the very air of this consciousness. And if the ‘Arthaśāstra’ of Kauṭilya is to be believed, law, order and precision were the watchwords of the Mauryan government. This is surprisingly reflected in the writings of the inscriptions themselves; not only are they beautifully executed, but they are indeed remarkable for their clarity, orderliness and precision; every single letter is cut into the stone with remarkable accuracy and carefulness, lines are more often than not straight and well-ordered, and mistakes, considering the enormous output, few and far between. The socio-economic policy of the Mauryan state, it must be taken into account, was also highly centralised and monopolistic. Mauryan art has to be viewed and understood against this historical, cultural and sociological background.

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This would help us to understand the character and ideology of Mauryan art.

III. Mauryan Columns

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The highly polished, tall and well-proportioned columns with slightly tapering monolithic shafts and standing free in space, complete and independent by themselves, are admittedly the best representatives of the court art of the Mauryas. The columns that bear the edicts of Aśoka include those of Delhi-Mirat, Allahabad, Lauriya-Araraj, Lauriya-Nandangarh, Rampurva ( with lion capital ), Delhi-Topra, Sāṅkiśya, Sanchi and Sarnath ; the non-edict bearing columns known up till now include those of Rampurva ( with bull capital ), Basarh-Bakhira ( with single lion capital ) and Kosam ( capital not yet recovered ) ; the third category, that of columns bearing dedicatory inscriptions, includes atleast two well-known specimens, those of Rummindei and Nigali Sagar. Of these the capitals of Basarh-Bakhira and Lauriya-Nandangarh pillars are *in situ*; those of Rampurva ( both bull and lion-crowned ), Sāṅkiśya, Sarnath and Sanchi have been recovered in more or less damaged condition. The Lauriya-Nandangarh and Basarh-Bakhira pillars and one of the two Rampurva columns is crowned by a single lion seated on its haunches; the Sāṅkiśya pillar by a standing elephant; the second Rampurva column by a standing bull; and the Sarnath and Sanchi columns by four semi-lions united back to back. The Lauriya-Araraj column seems once to have been crowned by a Garuḍa capital,³⁷ while the fragment of a capital of Chunar sand-stone with Mauryan polish and probably of Mauryan date, recovered from a village called Salempur, Muzaffarpur district, shows that it consisted of four semi-bulls seated back to back on a plain square abacus, the animals themselves being super-imposed by a square block decorated with honey-suckle ornaments. It was more than once suggested that the Rummindei Pillar was once crowned by a horse,³⁸ but Prof. Barua thinks that the word ‘vigada’ means ‘young elephant’.

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It has been suggested on an eighth century Sinhalese parallel that these crowning animals—elephant, horse (?), bull and lion—should be considered as guardians of the four cardinal points.³⁹ It is doubtful if this interpretation can with equal force be given to the Asokan animal capitals. Nor can it definitely be said they are all even exclusively Buddhist symbols. Except the horse, the three other animals as well as the Garuda that is assumed to have once crowned the Lauriya-Araraj pillar are symbols associated with early Brahmanical tradition and mythology, though the elephant, especially the white elephant, was considered particularly sacred in Buddha-legend as well ( cf. also the Dhauli elephant and the word ‘seto’ or the ‘white one’ at the end of the sixth Dhauli R. E. ; the phrase alluding to the white elephant below the thirteenth Girnar R. E. ; the word ‘gajatame’ or the ‘best of elephants’ and the drawing of an elephant on the north face of the Kalsi rock ). Moreover, a close study of the Rupnath and Sahasram Rock inscriptions and the seventh Pillar Edict suggests definitely that some of the pillars bearing his edicts must have been in existence before Asoka chose to have his rescripts on morality engraved on them ; they may even be pre-Asokan, and consequently may have nothing to do with Buddhism, while others were erected by Asoka himself and were his own Dharmastambhas. And lastly, it has been argued with some force that these pillars with animal capitals are but translations in stone of primitive animal standards.⁴⁰

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