Maurya and Shunga Art c9.7

c9.7

Chronologically the latest and architecturally the best of the series is undoubtedly the Lomaśa Ṛiṣi63 which though bearing no inscription may be taken to belong to the Maurya period. In ground plan and general design it is much like the Sudāmā, and consists similarly of a rectangular ante-chamber with barrel-vaulted roof and entered by the long side through a doorway with sloping jambs. This ante-chamber is connected at the end through a central doorway with a separate cell which is oval and not round as in the Sudāmā. But the most interesting architectural element in the Lomaśa Ṛiṣi is its facade which is frankly an exact translation of the gable end of a wooden structure in the language of stone. The carpenter's handiwork has indeed been copied in stone in every little detail. From this facade can easily be reconstructed what wood-built structural ‘chaityas’ had been like during this period.⁶⁴ The finial that surmounts the gable of the facade also seems to have been translated from either terracotta original or from wooden translation of terracotta prototypes.