Maurya and Shunga Art c4.5

c4.5

But of such objects of worship before the days of Aśoka Maurya we have hardly any remains extant, nor of the ‘yakṣa-devatās’ or spirits referred to in a general way or specifically by name in early Buddhist and Jaina texts. Attempts have been made on epigraphic reasons to identify the two statues in the round from Patna in reddish-grey sand stone of the Chunar region and bearing ‘chauris’ as those of yakṣas; indeed behind the shoulder of one of these statues, on the scarf is a short inscription, paleographically assignable to abour the first century A.D., that may be read as yakh (o) sa (?) Vatanaṃdī. That they are monumental sculptural representations of yakṣas there can hardly be any doubt, though persistent attempts were once made to identify them as statues of two kings of the Śaiśunāga dynasty of Magadha.⁷ This later theory is no longer seriously pressed; but it is still generally held that they belong stylistically to the later phase of Mauryan art. I shall try to show later on that the so-called Mauryan polish which is the rock-argument on which the assumption is based can hardly be considered sufficient for their being labelled as Mauryan, and that not only paleographically but stylistically as well they cannot belong to a period of art earlier than that represented at Sanchi and in the early primitives of Mathura.