Maurya and Shunga Art c12.3

c12.3

We have seen that with the artists of the Maurya court the third dimension was not a problem they had ever to grapple with; indeed they had a ready made solution of the problem at their disposal which they applied in the context of form they had to deal with. Under ordinary circumstances one would have expected this solution enter into the heritage of Śuṅga art. Quite contrary is however the case. The ground balustrade of Stūpa no. 2 of Sanchi which must be considered as representing the earliest phase of this art is wholly covered with animals, symbols and human figures held by flowing and luxuriant stalks of lotus, all worked in very low and flat reliefs, so low and flat that these reliefs may be said to be just essays in linear composition. The Barhut repository of art consists of reliefs on railings and gateways narrating the stories of the ‘dūrenidāna’ and ‘avidūrenidāna’ cycles of life of the Buddha, in square, rectangle, round or half-round panels or frames. These reliefs are invariably low and flat and are portrayed more as silhouettes sharply detached from their backgrounds. There is but slight attempt at modelling by grading the different planes of the relief in distinctive layers and then rounding off their contours, but the appearance of a flattened surface is there, always and invariably. Forms are conceived and presented not in terms of depth but in those of surface, and what optically should have been presented as hidden or partly covered is shown in part or in entirety. In other words, every thing is translated from the dimension of depth to that of surface. Nor are the figures shown in such sizes and proportions as may optically be suggested by their nearness or distance. On the contrary, they are big or small according to their meaning in the story depicted, i.e. according to their comprehensibility or reality, not in accordance with the optical impression. Objects are shown to the onlooker not by inference or suggestion, i.e. by showing one surface only in entirety and by suggesting the others hidden partly or wholly into the depth; they are rather made visible in entirety by tilting into the relief the other surfaces on the top and at the sides. These devices make the framed reliefs of Barhut look like flat table tops served with objects in full visibility. Singly taken the objects themselves often reveal a three dimensional vision and treatment especially where oversecting and fore-shortening are frankly resorted to. But nowhere is there any attempt to achieve any illusion of depth, for the direction is always towards the surface. Besides such reliefs, there are independent large-size human figures of Yakshas and Yakshiṇīs etc. in high and bold relief and occupying prominent positions on unframed railing posts. The flat posts merely serve as supports; indeed the figures but cling to them. These figures unlike those of the reliefs are round modelled shapes either in rigid parallelism and frontality as we see in the figure of Sirima Devatā or in variegated ‘bhaṅgas’ and ample turns and bends in movements as one sees in the figure of Sudarśanā Yakshiṇī. In the former case the treatment is compact and conglomerated while in the latter it has a swaying grace and a flowing plastic consistency; but in both cases there is the unmistakable evidence of an attempt to relate the three dimensional extensiveness to the flatness of the surface. The attitude is clearly of a compromise between the full three dimensional extension and the flat surface which is equally noticeable in the relation of the full round shape of the figure and the flat post. Thus, whether in reliefs or in large-size independent figures there is in Barhut evidence of a conflict and a resultant comprise through various devices, between two dimensional flat surface on the one hand and three dimensional vision on the other.