Maurya and Shunga Art c7.17.2

c7.17.2

It is, I think, permissible to assume that it is Indian aesthetic vision and imagination and Indian art tradition that are here largely at work, so far as art style at least is concerned. The same plastic conception and quality of modelling constitute the pivot round which early Indian art moves, and the same restraint and quiet dignity are the qualities that Indian art ever sought to achieve in higher art from the very beginning. Moreover, if the Dhauli and Sāṅkāśya elephants, particularly the former, are compared with the figures of elepants in bold and high relief in the frieze of the facade of the Lomaśa Ṛiṣi cave, it will at once be seen that they belong to the same style and tradition of art. This cave, even if not of Mauryan date, can not be very much later; all scholars recognise that the entire facade of this cave is the exact and literal translation in stone of a wooden prototype. It may be assumed therefore that figures of elephants in the same style and tradition as we see them on the stone facade were already being rendered in wood for generations when they came to be transferred on stone.