Maurya and Shunga Art c7.17.4

c7.17.4

it is perhaps the indigenous art tradition practised in wood, presumably through centuries, an art tradition to which the art of the Indus Valley may have bequeathed but distant memories. To such plastic practices in wood and other materials we have references in the ‘Arthaśāstra’, the ‘Manusamhitā’, the ‘Ashtādhyāyī’ of Pāṇini, and in certain early Buddhist texts (Barua, JISOA, XI, pp. 65-68). Thus, there must have existed in pre-Mauryan India an art of wood-carving and clay-modelling that carved and modelled free and round figures of men and animals out of wood and clay, and perhaps also of big dimensions.