Maurya and Shunga Art c13: X. Social Components of Śuṅga Art
Maurya and Śuṅga Art c13
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Contents
- c13.5 — 6 parts
X. Social Components of Śuṅga Art
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It is curious that Maurya art knows nothing of the creative fusion of the two trends referred to above; it is ignorant of the flowing linear movement, and of inexhaustible onrush of form it is unconscious. In its conventionalised naturalism and stagnant compactness it belongs to the final phase of a different art-tradition altogether. Touched by Indo-Aryan religious ideology it seems to have repudiated the human figure, but since it belonged to the last sequel of the art of the Asiatic West it was untouched either by the flowing linear movement and swaying balance of the North or by the wild growth of imaginative form of the un-Aryan South. Maurya art reflects the last stages of a tradition, Śunga art the initial stages of quite a different one. Yet Śunga art can not be labelled wholly as ‘primitive’. It is true, certain primitive traits as I have already pointed out, persist, but these traits are ethnically conditioned and are not attributable to technical limitation, not even the translation of depth in terms of surface. (Indeed few of the difficulties and limitations of ‘primitive’ art are to be seen in Śunga art, or otherwise it would not have been possible for the artists of Barhut and Bodhgaya to show figures in a large variety of
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MAURYA AND SUNGA ART
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attitudes, nor would it have been possible to employ oversecting and fore-shortening with ease wherever and whenever desirable. The ease and self-confidence of the figures of Bodhgaya are more illustrative on this point. Indeed, Barhut and Bodhgaya illustrate beyond doubt that they had a vast experience of ancient practice behind them, in low or bold reliefs or in their painted counterparts. This is further noticeable in the somewhat conscious elegance and sophistication of some of the bolder relief figures of both Barhut and Bodhgaya as well as in a number of terracottas usually assigned to the Śuṅga period, an elegance and sophistication expressed not only through their drapery, jewellery and coiffeurs but also through their poses and attitudes. It can safely be assumed that the art of the Śuṅga period reflects a stage when an art of folk and tribal origin and affiliation came to attain for obvious reasons recognition in the hands of a widening religious brotherhood patronised mostly by the landed and commercial middle classes and partly by the nobility and the rich mercantile classes of the Madhyadeśa.
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The facts for such an assumption are abundantly clear in the inscriptions of Barhut. The modern village of Barhut lies about one hundred miles to the south-east of Allahabad, and happens to be situated just at the northern end of the long narrow valley of Mahiyar near the point where the high road from Ujain and Bhilsa (ancient Vidiśā) to Patna (ancient Pāṭaliputra) turns to the north with Kosam (ancient Kauśāmbī) as a notable halting place and thus it coincides very nearly with the position of the jungle tract Vana in relation to the ancient Southern road referred to in early Buddhist texts. Buddhaghosha, or better, the author of the Sutta-Nipāta Commentary, knew this jungle-tract "which was called by some Tumbanagara and by others, Vana-Sāvatthī or Jungle-Śrāvastī….” This Tumbanagara may or may not be identical with the Tumbavana or Tubavana referred to in a few votive labels on the railing of the Sanchi Stūpa no. 1 ; but the fact that Barhut was situated at a point on the ancient high way of trade and commerce is significant and may not be lost sight of.
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An inscription on the lower pillar of the Eastern Gateway states : “Within the dominion of the Śuṅgas the gateway has been caused to be made and the workmanship in stone produced by Vātsiputra Dhanabhūti, the son of Gotiputa Āgaraju and grandson of Gārgiputra Viśvadeva.” Two more fragmentary inscriptions reveal that two other gateways or ornamental arches were erected by the same king who must have been an ally if not a feudatory of the Śuṅgas. Dhanabhūti’s son Vṛddhapāla happens to be the donor of a rail-bar while a queen Nāgarakshitā of another. One Chāpādevī, the wife of Revatimitra of Vidiśā, donated one, while another, Phalgudeva, also from Vidiśā, donated a second pillar. Like Barhut, Bodhgaya also seems to have stood on an important point of the ancient highway of trade and commerce. Here too the patronage given to the art reared up by the local Saṃgha seems to have come from the royalty. All that remains to-day of this art are the reliefs on a stone-railing which is said to have flanked the path the Buddha trod after his Enlightenment. Epigraphic evidence suggests that among the patrons of this art were the queens Kuramgī and Nāgadevā, the wives of Kings Indramitra and Brahmamitra whose coins found in different localities of Northern India are well-known and who probably were of Śuṅga lineage.
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While these names are to be ascribed to the royalty and the nobility there is a host of other names of donors in the Barhut inscriptions who may be said to belong to the class of church-dignitaries (ārya panthaka) and to the wealthy landed and mercantile classes. In one instance two ladies of the same family and a gentleman together made a gift; in a second the citizens of a town collectively made a gift; while there is a third instance where the Buddhist ‘dāyakas’ of Purikā collectively offered a donation. There can be no doubt that the majority, if not all, of the donors were either Buddhists or active supporters of the faith and the Saṃgha, and they were mostly townfolks. One of the votive inscriptions record the gift of a nun of the local monastic abode --‘avāsikāya bhikhuniyā dānam’; it is therefore reasonable to argue that the monks and nuns of the local Saṃghārāma were the moving figures responsible for rearing up the Railing and the Gateways and they were the trustees of the gifts made. The donations came from such places as Pāṭaliputra Kauśāmbī, Chekula (Caul, near Bombay), Karahakaṭa (Karhad in Satara district), port of Śrīputra in the extreme south-west, Purikā, Bhogavardhana, Nāsika, Paḍela (Pandaria in Bilaspur district, C. P. or Parel near Bombay ), Mathurā, Bhojakaṭa (in Vidarbha, Berar), Asitamasā etc. Buddhism in the second century B. C.
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had reached a stage in its career when it had outgrown the age of the Master and his apostles, when the Buddhist Saṃghas were being developed and when the Saṃghārāmas were fast becoming centres of religious and cultural activities of a considerable section of the upper class population. It is now a common knowledge that the Saṃghārāmas were largely patronised by the royalty, the nobility, the commercial classes including the artisans, and the Buddhist laity in which the ‘gahapatis’ or the landed gentry and wealthy citizens played the dominant role. Moreover, Buddhism was no longer a local movement within the bounds of Bihar and Eastern U. P., but had already spread far and wide. It must also be remembered that the artists and craftsmen responsible for visual presentation of the religion and thus bringing it to the door of the people in general, were also organised into art and craft guilds or ‘śreṇis’. The painter, ‘Thapati’ or the architect, ‘Tachhaka’ or the sculptor or carver, ‘Vaddhaki’ or the carpenter and the ‘Pāṣāṇa-koṭṭaka’, all had presumably their own guilds which speaks of a developed sense of civic organisation. It is difficult to say if all these arts and crafts were considered equally honorable;
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but from the fact that acting, dancing and music were listed among the despised callings, it is not unreasonable to think that some of the above crafts were considered low in social estimation because of tribal aboriginal folks whose hereditary professions generally they were. In any case, these artists and craftsmen seem to have combined in them the social ideology of the upper classes and of civic life on the one hand and that of the lower and despised castes and classes and their folk and aboriginal life on the other. In the sort of civic sophistication and delicate tastefulness that are unmistakable in the Śuṅga terracottas or in the consciously langourous attitudes, sensuous ‘bhaṅgas’ and luxurious ornamentation of the Yakṣiṇīs of Barhut and Bodhgaya, one can easily see the social ideology of the upper and middle class patrons and donors, while in a number of folded-palm and kneeling or standing figures on the reliefs it is easy to imagine the self-same patrons and donors represented with all their naive personal vanity. As in early Buddhism and in the formal qualities of early Buddhist art of Barhut and Bodhgaya, so in the social components of this art as well one can thus easily see a fusion of the different grades of the people, right from the royalty and the nobility down to the aboriginal folks, and the ideas and ideologies of the respective castes and classes.
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But since the Buddhist Samgha was very largely patronised by the commercial and to an extent by the landed middle classes, the social content of Śuṅga art, particularly of the terracottas and the larger figures, reflect more of their tastes and preferences, while in the general subject-matter of the reliefs and in their formal qualities of treatment, composition and manner of presentation it invariably reflects the current popular tastes, ideas, preferences and traditions of the various grades of the ordinary folk.
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Śuṅga art is thus the first organised and integrated art activity of the Indian people as a whole and stands directly counterposed to the court-art of the Mauryas. It reflects for the first time the results of the ethnic, social and religious fusion and integration that had been evolved through centuries on the Indian soil, more particularly in the Madhyadeśa. It is true, artists from the North-west, from those regions where the Kharoṣṭhī script was in vogue, worked side by side with the artists nearer home; the meaning of mason-marks in that script is unmistakable. Equally unmistakable is the meaning of the use of certain West-Asiatic motifs and Persepolitan column and capital forms, bearing clear testimony to the work done by artists from the North-west. But all such forms and motifs have been so completely fused and integrated into local forms and idioms that they have become just vague memories. Considered from this point of view Śuṅga art happens to be the first chapter of national and indigenous Indian art and expresses the contemporary Indian mind in all its grades and shades. Iconographically too this fusion and integration make themselves evident. Here in the reliefs of Barhut and Bodhgaya one can witness such gods of civilised conception as Sūrya, Lakshmī and Indra mingling freely with such tribal deities as the ‘yakṣas’ and ‘yakṣiṇīs’, the ‘vṛkṣadevatās’ and the ‘nāga’ spirits, ‘apsaras’ and ‘kinnaras’ of popular faith and imagination. There can be no doubt that types and iconographic forms of such divinities as Lakshmī and Sūrya and of such conceptions as the woman touching the tree with her foot and grasping its twigs with her hand and thereby bringing it into efflorescence had received their shape and sanction in ancient practice long before Barhut and Bodhgaya. It is interesting to observe that these forms and motifs can be followed from age to age through the entire realm of early Indian art.