Maurya and Shunga Art c11.10
Maurya and Śuṅga Art c11.10
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c11.10.1
Curiously enough Śuṅga art that immediately follows the art of the Mauryas is clearly a negation of the Maurya attitude. The reliefs of Barhut provide more than anything else an illuminating commentary on contemporary Indian life and attitude towards life as conceived and planned in early Buddhism. From this scheme ‘samājas’ or festive gatherings were not excluded; indeed, there are scenes in which dancing, singing and instrumental music are presented in all their ‘ravishing joviality’ in which all the elemental forces, all kinds of life and all classes of beings participate and lend their forms to them. The lower bas-relief of the outer face of the Prasenajit pillar, for example, has a scene with the inscription “Sādika-sammadam turam devānam - the jovial ravishing music of the gods, gay with dramatic acting,” and illustrating the dances of four heavenly dancers Alambushā, Miśrakeśī, Padmāvatī and Subhadrā. All of them, according to Puranic classification, belong to ‘laukikī’ or anthropomorphic class and to ‘mauneya’ i.e. representing a class of temptress of the saintly ascetics. Indeed, the Alambushā Jātaka gives an alluring description of the beauty, charm and position of the achharā or apsarā Alambushā; she is said to have been selected from among two and half crores of heavenly courtesans as one capable of testing the virtue of the great ascetic vow.⁸² But this is only one of many such scenes of festive gatherings including that of the Chuḍamaha festival.
c11.10.2
Nor were ceremonial religious processions as a method of popular religious education abandoned. The reliefs of Barhut portray many such popular demonstrations of religion in which chariots, elephants, horses, luminous celestial sights etc, find their proper place. Indeed, one can not help thinking that such demonstrationstions showing actual or artificial representation of ‘vimānas’, ‘hastis’, ‘agikhamḍhas’ and other ‘divya rūpas’ etc. were actually practised for the edification of the people, which is very usual in all popular anthropomorphic religions. One of the medallion-carvings of Barhut depicts the Bodhi tree of “Bhagavato Vipasino”; according to Buddhaghosha’s description, one reads in the story of luminous celestial groves like Chitralatā, Nandana etc. which were sighted by the people.83 Another scene depicts the story of the flight of five ṛishis during the Śākya plough festival. According to the ‘Lalitavistara’ the sudden arrest of the progress of the ascetics in flight was due to the overpowering majesty, of the Bodhisattva in the forest grove beneath. The story relates that the Bodhisattva appeared to the ascetics as a luminary shining with light emitting from his body, and to Suddhodana, as a fire issuing from a mountain peak and glorious like a lamp.84 These fires and luminous celestial forms are nothing but the ‘agikhamḍhāni’ and the ‘divyāni rūpāni’ of the Asokan edict.
c11.10.3
I am even inclined to think that the various miracles of the Buddha portrayed in the reliefs are also nothing but celestial forms referred to by the Mauryan monarch and which he was so much averse to. We have seen above that popular religious demonstrations included the exhibition of ‘charaṇa-chitras’ or portable picture-galleries and that the ‘charaṇa-chitras’, according to Buddhaghosha, were pictures of happy and unhappy destinies of men after death with appropriate labels attached to them. I would consider that the reliefs of Barhut whether in rectangular panels or in medallions are nothing but ‘charaṇa-chitras’, with appropriate labels, translated into stone, and hence not portable. And, is it contrary to facts to suggest that the Jātaka scenes depicted are nothing but lively pictorial records of the happy and unhappy destinies of men after death? Besides, the method of the arrangement of the various scenes depicted on the upright pillars and posts of the gates and the railings, i.e. their general layout in square or rectangular panels, one below the other, in more or less continuous narration, can not but invariably suggest similar arrangement of scenes in ‘caraṇa-chitras’ or ‘paṭa-chitras’ of later folk pictorial tradition. One may go still further and argue that the top horizontal panels of the gate with their sides rolled up at the two ends are nothing but adaptations in stone of ‘paṭa-chitras’ spread out for exhibition with their sides rolled up.
c11.10.4
It may therefore be safely assumed that such horizontal and vertical panel arrangement of scenes in continuous narration at Barhut and later on at Bodhgaya, Sanchi and elsewhere was directly adopted from scroll-paintings of popular and tribal tradition. It is thus clear that Śuṅga religious and cultural ideology as evidenced in the sculptures of Barhut was unlike that of Aśoka; indeed it was more popular in character and more collective in its aim and origin.