Maurya and Shunga Art c8.9

c8.9

A few male heads and small fragments of heads of the same material and similarly polished, all from Sarnath, are usually assigned to the Maurya period, since they are carved out of Chunar sand-stone and have the socalled Mauryan polish on them. It is very likely, as Coomaraswamy surmises on the ground of their “extraordinary actuality” and “marked individuality”, that these are “parts of portrait figures, and presumbaly portraits of donors.” Their head-dress consisting of either a fillet with a laurel wreath or a mural crown is certainly reminiscent of Hellenistic motifs. Similar fragments of stone heads with identical head-dresses hail also from Bhita and Mathura which along with the Sarnath examples constitute a ‘well-marked stylistic group,’ but there is nothing to connect them definitely with Mauryan art. All that they, together with some terracotta heads and figures from Mathura, Sarnath, Basarn, Bulandibagh, Kumrahar and other places, with Greek motifs on their headdress and occasionally even with foreign facial types, prove is that Greek motifs and types along with Hellenistic provincial art had migrated to as far east as the Ganges valley.⁵³ Since Hellenistic contacts were potent and effective even after the fall of the Mauryas, migration and adoption of Hellenistic art-forms and motifs at later periods of history can not be ruled altogether out of consideration.