Maurya and Shunga Art c5.7

c5.7

This is more evident in the domain of art and general culture. Indeed early Indian art can be viewed and understood fully only against the background of the age-old but very potent and effective Indo-Sumerian and Indo-Iranian contacts maintained through long centuries. In Maurya, Śuṅga, Āndhra and Kuṣāṇa art, there is a rich treasure of art and decorative motifs, ornamentations, devices and patterns that we meet with for the first time and which at once suggest “parallels in Sumerian, Hittite, Assyrian, Mykenean, Cretan, Trojan, Lykian, Phoenician, Achaemenid and Scythian cultures.” Coomaraswamy gives a long list of such common elements and technical analogies, and finally argues that “so far as its constituent elements are concerned, and apart from any question of style, there is comparatively little in Indian decorative art that is peculiar to India and much that India shares with Western Asia.” It is difficult to disagree with Coomaraswamy when further he says :