Maurya and Shunga Art c7.5

c7.5

The Sāṅkāśya elephant is on a lower level of artistic conception. Inspite of an appearance of movement the huge and plumpy animal is, plastically speaking, comparatively static, though there is some evidence of movement in the modelling of the muscles and of the volume of live flesh of the hind portion and the legs. The front legs are however treated pillar-like though the intended effect was presumably one of tension, since the animal appears to shrink backwards with the body-weight pressed in that direction. This attitude of the body, by the way, fails to harmonise with the abacus and the capital below. From Dhauli to Sāṅkāśya there is a steady direction, it seems, towards a stylised treatment of the plastic volume, of muscles and body-flesh. This is evident in the treatment of the upper but more in the lower portion of the chest and abdomen of the Sāṅkāśya elephant, but nowhere increasingly more and more than in the lion figures.