Maurya and Shunga Art c9.2

c9.2

Of the architectural remains usually ascribed to the Maurya period very few are artistically significant. Tradition ascribes a large number of ‘stūpas’ and ‘chaitya’ halls to the building activities of Aśoka, but none of them exists to-day in their original form and plan except the excavated ‘chaitya’ halls bearing inscriptions of Aśoka and Daśaratha, in the Barabar-Nagarjuni group of caves. The monolithic rail at Sarnath in grey and polished Chunar sand-stone may have been erected under the direction and patronage of Aśoka himself. Its architectural form is exactly that of the rails of Barhut, and must have been literally transferred into stone from contemporary wooden originals without possibly any understanding of its constructional characteristics. The plinth or the ‘ālambana’, the uprights or the ‘stambhas’, the horizontal bars or the ‘sūchis’ and the copings or the ‘uṣṇīṣas’ have all been carved out of what must have been one huge slab of stone; an understanding of the constructional characteristics would have certainly made the task easier by piecing together the constituent parts of smaller slabs of stone, exactly in the same way as we see them done at Barhut, Sanchi and Bodhgaya. The altar or the ‘bodhimaṇḍa’ at Bodhgaya is also traditionally associated with Aśoka. It is permissible to assume that it was perhaps much like the ‘bodhimaṇḍa’ as we see it in one of the Barhut relifs,⁵⁹ inscribed in Brāhmī characters “Bhagavato Sākya Muṇino Bodho.” The point of architectural interest is that the Barhut altar consists of four pilasters, forms of which were evidently derived from wooden prototypes and had nothing to do with the monumental Asokan columns.