Maurya and Shunga Art c7.8

c7.8

The Rampurva bull is architectonically less advanced than the lion from the same place since "it fails to harmonise with the capital on which it stands."¹³ Marshall argues that it is not "so well-executed as the (Rampurva) lion", if he means that it is not as tense and tight in formal appearance or does not show as conventionally powerful and modelled treatment or stylisation of form he is undoubtedly correct. But at the same time it has to be recognised that the artist responsible for this piece of sculpture had a remarkable sense of form as well as of plastic volume and of the quality of the flesh. Here is indeed realistic vision and close observation of nature and full understanding of the character of the object; nothing stylised or conventional or abstract has blurred the mental image of the artist or stood in the way of his execution. The animal is supposed to stand with its full weight on earth in quiet and restrained dignity, and the artist has rendered that idea with remarkable clarity and perfect realism. Here too the modelling is vigorous but not conventional, plastic and linear sense fully mature but not schematised; the energy and vitality that are within express themselves in restrained but powerful dignity; a dynamic naturalism gives it potency and strength, which I consider to be a certain legacy of the art of the bulls of the pre-historic Indus Valley.