Maurya and Shunga Art c8.5

c8.5

The same conflict in a rather accentuated form of fully rounded volume and flat surface, the same complex relation of ornaments and garments to the body, the same heaviness and archaism, rigidity and lifeless smoothness, characterise what remains of the colossal sand-stone statue of a Yaksha ⁷⁰ recovered from Baroda near Parkham and another slightly smaller but comparatively well-preserved Yaksha statue from Parkham itself ( both now in the Mathura Museum ), the latter having the same polish as that of the Maurya columns. There can be no doubt that in all these statues we have a clear expression of the weighty and imposing earthiness that traditional Indian imagination connects with its Yakshas and Yakshiṇīs, gods and goddesses of material plentiness and physical welfare. The lightly bent knees and the comparatively thin legs of the standing Parkham figure have some kinship with those of the Maṇibhadra Yaksha statue from Pawaya near Gwalior⁷¹, while the frank and ‘unconditional frontality’ of both Baroda and Parkham statues, attaching little or on importance to the back, reminds one of ‘primitive’ Bodhisattvas of the Mathura school. Compared to the Patna Yakshas the Parkham specimen is more stiff and archaic in appearance, more rough and crude in execution; but in the relation of ornament and dress with the body and in the quality of the tight and stiff modelling it betrays the same essential characteristics. In its upper part it shows no doubt a tendency towards flattened surface treatment, but in the lower half fully rounded and powerfully modelled mass is in full evidence giving the legs a lively form and appearance in strong contrast to the torso with a protruding and deformed abdomen which is possibly an individual characteristic. The flowing drapery which is treated as transparent where it clings to the body and as separate though in thin and flat volumes where it is gathered together, is indicated at the front by incised wave lines (as in Barhut) and at the ends by a single rounded ridge. It seems that such treatment of drapery as we see in the Parkham image can in no way be dated earlier than Barhut, and similar shape and modelled form of the legs cannot be earlier than the first century B.C. In any case the Baroda and Parkham statues constitute what we may call the earliest Mathura primitives and the initial chapter of the Mathura school of sculpture. They have hardly anything to connect themselves with Mauryan sculpture of known date and locality, and are perhaps later than even the Patna Yakshas discussed above.