Maurya and Shunga Art c10.3

c10.3

A most important exponent of Maurya court ideology in sculpture is the crowning lion figure which, we have seen, was conditioned by a plastic vision and artistic convention already fixed and determined within a foreign art tradition. They raise the presumption that they for the first time introduced into the realm of Indian art a highly advanced power of visualisation and a fuller comprehension of the problem of the third dimension. But here a counter-hypothesis, I have already pointed out, presents itself. It is permissible to assume that these two qualities of monumental art were not unknown to Indian artists who used to work in wood and clay and shape images in fully rounded form. The evidences of the ‘Arthaśāstra’, the ‘Manusamhitā’, the ‘Aṣṭādhyāyī’ and certain early Buddhist texts are clear on this point. Moreover, the assumption seems to find strong support not only from the spirit and appearance but also from the general conception, treatment and execution of the Dhauli elephant and the Rampurva bull which undoubtedly belong to a different art tradition. I have tried also to point out that the Patna Yakshas, the Didarganj Yakshiṇī, and the Lohanipur Jaina images to an extent belong to the line of evolution of this tradition, though it must be admitted that the Maurya elephant and the bull belong qualitatively to a higher aesthetic level. This court art does not seem to have taken cognisance of another tradition of art, a more primitive, perhaps folk tradition of presumably some ethnic significance, that was hardly conscious of the third dimension and fully rounded form. This latter tradition came to be fixed in permanent material for the first time in Barhut where already the conflict between round volume and flat surface makes its appearance and gradually shows itself not only in the Baroda and Parkham Yakshas and in the so-called Manasādevī of Parkham still in worship, but also in the Patna Yakshas, the Lohanipur images, and some of the huge primitives of the early Mathura school.