Maurya and Shunga Art c7.17.1

c7.17.1

The Dhauli elephant and perhaps the Rampurva bull seem to belong to a somewhat different aesthetic vision and outlook, perhaps to a different art tradition other than that of the lions. True, indeed, so far as feeling for volume and its reproduction are concerned they belong to the same fully developed stage of art as that of the crowning lions discussed above, and that there is nothing archaic and primitive about them; but it is equally true there is nothing conventional about them as well, and the plastic sense and method of treatment are altogether different. The fluidity of the modelling betrays a full knowledge of the softness of the flesh and of the flowing current of life that is within; it is also restrained and is not contaminated by any conventional exaggeration or localised emphasis. Nor is there any evidence of schematisation of form. Indeed, these two examples (with perhaps the Sānkāsya elephant as a close third) represent a different aesthetic outlook and a different art tradition than those of the crowning lions and the lion, horse and bull reliefs on the Sarnath abacus. This difference in outlook and tradition is clearly brought to the fore when the Rampurva bull is compared with the relief of the same animal in the Sarnath column; the two bulls belong to two different worlds as it were.