Maurya and Shunga Art c12.5.2

c12.5.2

It is only when the Northern people was brought into contact with the Southerners that man came to play his part and gradually became the pivot of artistic representation. But on the other hand, the Northerners brought with them into the South not only abstract patterns and designs but also an ornament flowing in rhythmic curves. The fusion of these two trends, the Northern and the Mediterranean (i.e. the Southern), can best be seen in ancient Greece and mediaeval Italy. Is it unreasonable to argue that the same phenomenon is observable in India? The social and religious ideology of Aśoka characterised by a sense of ethical purity and rational outlook as evidenced in his edicts is essentially Indo-Aryan. His preference for animal symbols and even rhythmically flowing vegetal designs appears to be Northern (i.e. Indo-Aryan) in affiliation. This also probably explains why Mauryan court art emphasises the animal figures more than the human. On the other hand the wealth of human figures in Śuṅga art is to be explained by the assumption of the existence of an art in pre-Mauryan India in which men and women must have played an important role, and which was un-Aryan in racial character and ideology. The human figure which came later on to be the main exponent of Indian art of the classical and early mediaeval periods, considered from this point of view, appears to be the gift of un-Aryan Southerners of India.