Maurya and Shunga Art c11.11

c11.11

It is well known that primitive Buddhism incorporated a large portion of the faiths, beliefs and practices of the un-aryan aboriginal tribes of the Madhyadeśa and Eastern India. Elements of totemistic, animistic and shamanistic beliefs and practices can be traced from the worship of the Bodhi trees of the seven Buddhas to the worship of heroes and of funerary mounds, from the cult of the ‘nāga’ or serpent to that of the ‘yakshas’ or malevolent demi-gods. Indeed, the Jātakas which reflect the popular side of Buddhism are replete with traces of tribal cults. All these primitive and tribal beliefs and practices of local origin were cleverly woven into the texture of a highly intellectual and rational scheme of doctrines which were Aryan in origin and character. The metaphysical and psychological basis in other words, of the Buddha’s doctrinal scheme transformed the tribal and regional cults of the Madhyadeśa and Eastern India into a universal and common religion of the people. Aśoka does not seem to have understood this popular social significance of Buddhism. At any rate he does not seem to have cared about it; neither his edicts nor Mauryan court art seem to have felt its impress. Ethnically Mauryan court art as seen in the Sanchi and Sarnath lions is pre-Aryan, but not wholly indigenous. Like the art of the pre-historic Indus Valley it shares in a common West-Asiatic culture-heritage which is presumably the product of the fusion of more than one ethnic factor and in which the aboriginaly Indian plays its part no doubt. The most important contribution of this West-Asiatic culture to Indian art is naturalism which is lively and dynamic in the art of the Indus valley, but by the time it reached Maurya court art it had practically assumed a compact, hard and stagnant character. The Aryan intrusion had already made itself felt for more than a millenium when the Mauryas were on the throne, and a new ethnic structure was being slowly built up all over Northern India with more or less pronounced difference of ethnic accents in the different ethnic zones of this vast sub-continent. This difference was presumably due to the degree and extent of incorporation of the new element on the one hand and the strength and tenacity of the pre-Aryan elements on the other. Mauryan court art, in any case, does not seem to have felt the impress of this great new factor in the ethnic and hence in the social character of the country. It would seem that this was due more to the personal outlook of Aśoka and the general phil-Hellenism and phil-Achaemenism of the Mauryan monarchs. The edicts of Aśoka seem to suggest that there was a living art and a potent aesthetic ideology amongst the people in general which found expression through popular religious demonstrations and popular religious rites and practices, through the ‘lepya’, ‘lekhya’ and ‘caraṇa-chitras’ and auspicious ceremonial observances. It may also be assumed that besides paintings and drawings in two dimensions, there must have also been current the practice of working in reliefs and in the round, in the age-old Indian materials of clay, cloth, straw, wood and metal. Barua has collected a number of literary references to such practices (JISOA, XI, pp. 65-68). The two figures in gold from Lauriya and Piprahwa may also be cited as instances on the point, I have already tried to suggest that the art of the Śungas as evidenced at Barhut is nothing but the fixation of this basically tribal and primitive art of the people in permanent material, i. e. stone.