Maurya and Shunga Art c5.13

c5.13

Both Megasthenes and Kauṭilya refer to a state department run and maintained specifically for the purpose of looking after foreigners²⁴ who evidently were quite numerous not only in the capital city of Pāṭaliputra but in other provincial capitals and trade centres as well. There can hardly be any doubt that these foreigners were mostly colonial Greeks and a very large majority of them were merchants and businessmen. Indeed in the third century B. C. a caravan high way ran from Taxila via Kandahar, Persepolis and Susa to Seleukeia on the Tigris, while another old main road ran via Kandahar, Heerat, Hekatompylos, Ekbatana and Seleukeia and was joined by the Taxila-Kabul-Bactria route.²⁵ Taxila, it is well-known, was the seat of an important Maurya province, and from here a great high way ran direct to connect Pāṭaliputra with the Hellenic East. Besides, there was also a coastal sea-borne trade route to Seleukeia along the Persian Gulf and up the Tigris, and to Egypt following the coastal line. It is this trade route that explains the Aramaic inscription referred to above and dateable in the fourth century B. C. It was along this route also that foreigners including Greek envoys, traders, travellers, artists and craftsmen must have flocked to Maurya India in such numbers as to oblige the state to maintain a department to look after their comfort and well-being. This intimate contact indeed explains such finds as the fragmentary handle of a terracotta vase showing Alexander’s head in lion’s skin recovered from Taxila,²⁶ or random finds from Sarnath, Basarh and the Patna region of terracotta pieces of distinctive Hellenistic appearance or with definite Hellenistic motifs and designs.²⁷ That they belong probably to a later date does not minimise the importance of the very intimate relations the Maurya court maintained with the Hellenic East; rather they point to the fact that even after the decline and downfall of the Mauryas parts of India continued to remain in touch with the Hellenistic world. Was it not that within a quarter of a century after the death of Aśoka a Greek army crossed the Hindukush and penetrated into the east as far as Sāketa ( in Ayodhyā ), the Pañchāla country, Mathurā and Pāṭaliputra ?