Maurya and Shunga Art c5.8

c5.8

All this amounts to proof that the themes and motifs of pre-Maurya art cannot have differed very greatly from those of Maurya and Śuṅga; fantastic animals, palmettes, rosettes and bell-capitals must have been common elements of craftsman's repertory under the Nandas as in the time of Aśoka. India, in centuries and perhaps millenniums B.C. was an integral part of an ‘Ancient East’ that extended from the Mediterranean to the Ganges valley.”¹⁸