Maurya and Shunga Art c6.8

c6.8

A clear idea of the whole and of component parts of a Maurya column is afforded by the one at Lauriya-Nandangarh which is a perfect specimen of the long series of such columns. All Maurya columns, no matter where they are set up, are chiselled out of grey Chunar sand stone and have a lustrous polish due to the application perhaps of silicious varnish on the stone. This uniform place of origin of the material probably suggests that there was at or near Chunar an art centre established and patronised directly by the Maurya court, an assumption supported by the additional fact that all the component parts of the columns including the crowning animal, abacus and the shaft tend increasingly to form one whole so far as art-form is concerned. At least this had been the problem the artists were confronted with and which they tried to solve with increasing success. The component parts that are easily known are (1) the shaft, always plain and smooth, circular in section and slightly tapering upwards, without any base whatsoever, and always and invariably chiselled out of one piece of stone; (2) the capital, having the shape and appearance of a gently arched bell formed of lotus-petals, the proportionate ratio of breadth and height being variable from capital to capital, and joined with the shaft by a copper-bolt of cylindrical shape bulging in the middle (cf. the Rampurva lion-capital column and the copper-bolt that used once to connect the capital with the shaft); (3) the abacus, square and plain in the earlier specimens and circular and decorated in the later ones, and of variable proportions; and (4) the crowning animal, seated or standing, always and invariably in the round, and always constituting a single piece with the abacus. The constituent elements may now be taken up one by one.