Maurya and Shunga Art c7.16

c7.16

It may be argued that the art-form and tradition as revealed in the Mauryan lions represent the stage of exhaustion of the art of the Indus Valley in the natural process of dissipation of the art-form that we have evidence of in the seals of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. I am not altogether certain about it, not because the art of the Indus Valley remains chronologically unrelated and unexplained, but because the two arts belong to different aesthetic visions and imaginations. The dynamic naturalism that interprets the pent up energy of the Indus Valley animals has nothing to connect itself with the stagnant compactness of treatment of the Asokan lions. While life flows in sinuous rhythm in one, it stands still in meaningless tension in another; indeed, the two seem to belong to two different worlds of vision and imagination.