Maurya and Shunga Art c8.10

c8.10

A few other fragmentary reliefs have also been assigned to the Mauryan period, again without sufficient reason. An intensely lyrical and qualitatively of very subtle significance is the figure of a young sorrowing lady worked in high relief out of the fragment of an arch.⁵⁴ The soft and delicate modelling of the nude upper part, nowhere so sensitively rendered as in the back and in the fresh young breasts, the soft linear rhythm and the compositional unity have no parallel in early Indian art. Indeed, its plastic and linear expressiveness does not fit in against the background of either Maurya or Śunga art. The style and treatment of the hair, ornaments and garment have indeed a primitive heaviness of form but the modelling and linear composition are very much in advance. Another relief from Bhita⁵⁴ also shows decided advance in general appearance, pose and movement, and from the character of relief composition, facial type and surface treatment it can not be dated earlier than Bodhgaya and Sanchi.