History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c15.s3.60

c15.s3.60

86. We find the figures of Gaṅgā and Yamunā be- Revival of Art. come royal and national symbols in architecture. The Matsya Purāṇa which embodies the text on architecture up to the Sātavāhana period, as observed above, knows nothing of the figures of Gaṅgā and Yamunā as essential or otherwise, to be associated with the temple of Śiva or Viṣṇu or of any other god. Their adoption is essentially a political motif. The association of the Bhāraśivas with the Ganges was a vital moral force in the Bhāraśiva period. The Bhāraśivas liberated the Gaṅgā and brought her in the sphere of art as on their coins. They also brought the Yamunā within the compass of their art, as Bhūmarā and the Nāga-canopied figures of the two river-goddesses at Deogarh would indicate. But the Vākāṭakas made them their ‘imperial symbols’, from whom they were transmitted to the Chālukyas and became their ‘Imperial Symbols’² (§ 101 A). The Pallavas—the branch line of the Vākāṭakas—used them.³ And the people were always conscious of the political meaning of this symbolism—‘the Empire’ (‘the Empire of Āryāvarta’).⁴ In the Nāga- Vākāṭaka idolisation of Gaṅgā and Yamunā, there is the idolisation and idealisation of the land of the Gaṅgā-and-Yamunā where they re-established orthodoxy. The elegant moulding of the river-goddesses at Bhūmarā and Nachnā are a mirror of the Nāga-Vākāṭaka culture. The Vākāṭakas themselves were a line of handsome men. The (e) Vāyu manuscript notes that the four sons of Pravīra were sumūrtayaḥ, handsome, statue-like.¹ The Ajaṇṭā inscription especially notes the handsomeness of Devasena and Hariṣeṇa. Under the Vākāṭakas the art of sculpture and the graphic art of Ajaṇṭā which lay under their direct government, were vivified. The tradition was kept up in the later Vākāṭaka period. The credit of this revival of Hindu art which had been universally attributed by the present-day writers wholly to the Guptas, like the credit of Sanskrit revival, really belongs to the Vākāṭakas. The seed of all architectural modes which reach their full development at Eran, Udaygiri, Deogarh and Ajaṇṭā and even later, are all to be found in the Vākāṭaka temples at Nachnā—the perforated window, the gavākṣa balcony, the sikhara, the entwined serpent, the sculptured and ornamented door-frame, the bulging shape of the sikhara, the square temple in the residential style, etc. [On the age of the Nachnā temples, see App. A at the end.]