Maurya and Shunga Art c14.5

c14.5

This exhaustive clarity of vision and expression is in no small measure helped by the clearness of the outlines of the figures and their contours, The cutting of the outline of the figures into the stone is almost perpendicular, with the result that a thin shadow separates the respective forms from the background as well as one form from the other, but in Barhut the shadows are not yet connected by any rhythmical display, nor is there any uniformity of the darkness of the background. In Bodhgaya, however, the cutting is at a slight angle with the ground of the relief so that there is more scope for modelling the figures which seem to emerge from the uniform dark background.