A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c17.10

c17.10

Are we to regard these sculptures, and especially the reliefs of Bharhut, Sānchī, and Bodh-Gayā, as purely Indian in origin and inspiration, or as clever adaptations of foreign models? The sudden apparition simultaneously of stone architecture, stone sculpture, and stone inscriptions during the reign of Asoka, when considered in connexion with the intimate relations known to have existed between the Maurya empire and the Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia, Africa, and Europe, raises a reasonable presumption that the novelties thus introduced into the ancient framework of Indian civilization must have been suggested from outside. That presumption is strengthened by the foreign style of the monolithic columns, which undoubtedly were a novelty brought into being by the command of an enlightened despot in close touch with the outer world.