Maurya and Shunga Art c11.5

c11.5

But official mal-administration was more a symptom than a cause; the disease lay in the socio-political outlook of Mauryan imperialism and in the administrative machinery which happened to be the outward manifestation of that outlook. The sixteenth century Tibetan Lāmā Tāranātha seems to suggest that Bindusāra had to suppress a general revolt "of the nobles and kings of sixteen towns,"72 while the 'Gārgī Saṃhitā' refers pointedly to the oppressive rule of some later Maurya monarchs. Śāliśuka, a descendant of Aśoka, was compelled to abdicate the throne in favour of his elder brother on account of the terrible tyranny he used to inflict on his subjects. Indeed, he has been described as an 'adhārmikaḥ' in the guise of a 'dharmavādī.' 73 The same text has a veiled reference to Aśoka as 'mohātma' or 'fool' and a scarcastic allusion to his 'dharmarājya.' 74 While there is nothing to indicate that royal tyranny and official oppression were in any way directed against the Brāhmaṇas in particular, there is evidence to show that the people in general smarted under both and had hardly any love for the dynasty and its court and administration. The ascription of the term 'asura' to the Mauryas by certain Epic and Purāṇic authors can not be lightly brushed aside on the ground that the writers were Brahmanical and the Mauryas Buddhists. Indeed, there is no evidence to suggest that the first two Maurya emperors were Buddhists. It seems rather that much of the veiled hatred and contempt with which later writers view the Mauryas may have been due to their being exponents of a personal culture-ideology that was largely foreign to the people in general, especially of the Madhyadeśa, and of a socio-political outlook dominated by personal will. Maurya art is but one expression of that culture-ideology and of that essentially personal social outlook. Maurya official mal-administration and infliction of personal royal will are also but symptoms of these two fundamental characteristics. I wonder if the rebellions alluded to in the ‘Divyāvadāna’ and Asokan epigraphs were not basically due to these causes, and if the Śuṅga coup d'etat an expression of the smouldering resentment amongst a large section of the people which was seized on by the Maurya official Puṣyamitra who happend to be a Brāhmaṇa and acted like an adventurer. In any case the fact remains, as I shall presently try to demonstrate, that the art of the Śuṅga period that chronologically speaking follows closely on the art of the Maurya court and which from the point of view of subject-matter and iconography is Buddhist reflects more of the mind, tradition and culture-ideology of the larger section of the people than Maurya art was capable of. Indeed, Śuṅga art, formally and spiritually, is practically a negation of all that Maurya art stands for; they are different in motive and direction, in their form, technique and significance. It is not unlikely therefore that during and after the Mauryas a silent revolution was gradually making itself felt against all that the Mauryas and their court stood for; but this reaction, it must be remembered, had nothing to do with the Brāhmaṇas as such. If anything, it was from the point of view of Śuṅga art, the assertion of the tribal and primitive elements of a culture against the domination of a dynasty and court largely under the influence of a foreign culture-complex, or more correctly speaking, within the orbit of an international West-Asiatic culture-complex. In politics it took the shape of popular revolts in the provinces against official maladministration and finally in a military coup that supplanted the Maurya court and dynasty in the centre.