Maurya and Shunga Art c12.6
Maurya and Śuṅga Art c12.6
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c12.6.1
A most characteristic formal quality of Śuṅga art is its flowing linear rhythm that binds all isolated objects in one continuous stream of life as it were. Look at any coping stone and you will find a huge stout lotus stalk flowing in rhythmical waves from form to form, not only binding each isolated item in one whole but permeating each isolated object itself, including the limbs of human beings, the animals and the trees with the same flowing linear rhythm. A most perfect example of this flowing linear rhythm is furnished by the representation of a griffin on a half-medallion on a railing post of the Sanchi Stūpa no. 2. But this is equally evident in the majority of the panelled reliefs and in the bolder and frameless large-size human figures on the upright posts. Even in the round and half round panels there is a slow but ceaseless flow of free rhythmical movement. The figures may be loosely dispersed on the reliefs, singly and in an isolated manner, but each one even in their isolation has to feel the touch of that rhythm and be swayed and permeated by it, whether it is on the reliefs of the Sanchi Stūpa no. 2 or on those of Barhut. Wherever luxuriant vegetation finds a place its radiating and continuous linear movements dominate the composition and all the figures irrespective of action and status become equal and integral parts of the whole.
c12.6.2
A panel of the so-called Prasenajit pillar and the figures of Yakṣiṇīs Candrā and Sudarśanā may be cited as examples of this flowing and rhythmical linear movement. In the former a slowly gliding curve passes over the bodies of the seated figures that constitute the music party. It sways each individual figure and bends it to the tune of the curve, but it does not stop there. It flows uninterruptedly along the swaying hands of the four dancers, through the movements of their bodies including that of the young one at the bottom. The entire composition is held by this slow but ceaselessly flowing linear rhythm that imparts life to the scene portrayed. Another scene equally vibrant with life shows the potency of this linear rhythm in no uncertain manner; it is the scene of Chuḍāmaha festival in the Sudharmā Hall of the Vaijayanta palace. The figures of Candrā, Alakanandā and Sudarśanā Yakshiṇīs, treated in relation to surface, nevertheless consist essentially of swaying and gliding curves of rhythmical lines. Even the jewelled drapery swaying vertically is more or less linearised in pattern, and that linear rhythm is imparted to the details of the tree, the ‘vāhanas’, and to the modelling of the body itself. But the discerning eye of Kramrisch, as early as 1924, observed that there was another trend in Śuṅga art which was equally potent, a trend characterised by a disregard of this flowing linear rhythm.
c12.6.3
This trend is best illustrated in several panels of the so-called Ajātaśatru pillar representing the Great Miracle of Śrāvastī, the preaching of ‘Abhidharma’ in the Tushita heaven and Buddha’s descent from the Tushita heaven by a ladder. It can be seen at once that these scenes are all completely devoid of any free and flowing linear rhythm; the figures are hard and isolated and the compositions are regulated in a schematic manner by vertical and horizontal lines. It is only an agitated display of light and darkness that disturb the otherwise static character of the scences. The trend is equally marked in several frameless figures standing on upright posts; such are the figures of Virudhaka Yaksha, Gāṅgeya Yaksha, Sūchiloma Yaksha, Chakravāka Nāgarāja, Mihira, the Sun god of Uttarapatha and Sirima Devatā, for example. No linear rhythm enlivens these figures; features isolated, compact and conglomerated are flattened in terms of surface, and give them an appearance of static and mechanical rigidity. In direct contrast to the flat treatment of the chest and abdomen of the male figures is the compact roundity of the breast-volume of Sirima Devatā which illustrates the conflict between the flatness of the surface and the third dimensional extensiveness.