The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.24

Language: English

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With the rise of the Śuṅga power in Hindustān during the second century b.c. and the simultaneous extension of the Bactrian dominion to the Punjab, the national art of India underwent a rapid development. Foreign and especially Hellenistic ideas now flowed eastward in an ever-increasing volume, and from them the Indian artist drew new vitality and inspiration for his work. At the same time stone more and more usurped the place of wood for architectural purposes, and by reason of its greater durability tempted the artist to expend more pains upon its carving, while it naturally lent itself to more perfect technique. Of the monuments of this period, the most notable is the Buddhist *stūpa* at Bhārhut in Central India, erected about the middle of the second century B.C. Before its discovery by Sir A. Cunningham in 1873, the body of this *stūpa* had been almost destroyed by the neighbouring villagers, but portions of the eastern gateway (*toraṇa*) and of the railings which encircled the monument were found beneath its ruins and are now deposited in the Calcutta Museum. The *stūpa* itself was of brick, and apparently of much the same design as the Great *stūpa* at Sānchī, described below.

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Around the base was a massive stone railing of the usual type, divided into four quadrants by entrances at the cardinal points, while other railings of smaller dimensions, of which fragments have been found around the structure, once flanked the berm and ascending stairway, and no doubt enclosed the crowning *hti*. At the eastern entrance was a gateway about 22 feet 6 inches in height (Pl. XV, 41), and possibly similar gateways may once have adorned the other entrances also, though no remains of them have been found. Both gateway and railings are lavishly enriched with sculptured reliefs, many of which illustrate incidents in the *Jātakas* or scenes connected with the life of the Buddha, and these illustrations are made all the more valuable by the descriptive titles attached to them, which leave no doubt as to their identification. Thus, one relief depicts the Nāga Jātaka; another (Pl. XVI, 42), the dream of Māyā; a third, the Jetavana at Çrāvastī, with its trees and shrines and the ground half strewn with coins which Anāthapiṇḍa is taking from a bullock cart; others, again, represent the royal processions of Ajātaçatru or Prasenajit visiting the Buddha (Pl. XVI, 43); and in others is depicted the worship of Buddha's head-dress in the Devaloka (Pl. XVI, 44), or of the Bodhi-tree by the Nāga king Erāpata (Pl. XVI, 45).

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Besides these and many other miscellaneous scenes there are a multitude of single images carved in high relief upon the pillars of the rail—Yakshas and Yakshīs, Devatās or Nāgarājas (Pl. XVII, 46, 47). The style of the carvings on the ground rail is by no means uniform. Some show little advance on the indigenous work of the previous century, the defects of rudimentary technique being almost as striking in these reliefs as they were in indigenous sculpture in the round. In such cases the figures are portrayed as silhouettes sharply detached from their background, an effort towards modelling being made merely by grading the planes of the relief in severe and distinctive layers, and then rounding off the contours of the silhouette or interior details. At the same time the forms are splayed out to the verge of distortion, and the influence of mental abstraction on the part of the artist is still manifest in the treatment of the feet or of hands in the attitude of prayer, which, irrespective of anatomical accuracy, are turned sideways and presented in their broadest aspect. In other carvings, the treatment of the relief is more mature.

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In these, occasional traces of mental abstraction, due to force of habit, are still visible, and they all show the same aversion to depth, but the individual figures are conceived and modelled in general conformity with nature, not in a gradation of separate planes or as mere silhouettes, and are presented, moreover, at various angles and in a variety of natural poses. This superior execution is shared, also, by some of the sculptured balusters between the architraves of the eastern gateway, and it is significant that these balusters are further distinguished by the un-Indian countenances of the figures carved upon them and by the presence of Kharoshṭhī letters engraved as masons' marks in contradistinction to the Brāhmī characters which appear on the railing. The only rational explanation of these phenomena is that some of the sculptors engaged on this railing came from the north-west of India, where, thanks to western teaching, the formative arts were then in a more advanced state, and that these sculptors were responsible for the better class of reliefs, the inferior work being done by the local artists of Central India. In this connexion a special interest attaches to a *Garuḍa* pillar (Pl.

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XVIII, 48) set up about this time at Besnagar near Bhīlsa, the ancient Vidiçā, in Gwalior State, the inscription on which states that it was dedicated to Vāsudeva by a Greek named Heliodorus, an inhabitant of Taxila and an envoy of King Antialcidas, and thus furnishes incontrovertible evidence of the contact which was then taking place between this part of India and the Greek kingdoms of the Punjab.