The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.31.4

v1.c33.31.4

The extraneous influences referred to are attested by the presence of exotic motifs, which meet the eye at every point and are readily recognised—by the familiar bell capitals of Persia, by floral designs of Assyria, by winged monsters of Western Asia, all of them part and parcel of the cosmopolitan art of the Seleucid and succeeding empires of the West, in which the heterogeneous elements of so many civilisations were fused and blended together. But it is attested still more forcibly by the striking individuality of many of the figures, as, for instance, of the hill-men riders on the Eastern Gate, by the occasional efforts towards spatial effects, as in the relief of the ivory workers of Vidiçā, by the well-balanced symmetry of some of the groups, and by the ‘colouristic’ treatment with its alternation of light and dark, which was peculiarly characteristic of Graeco-Syrian art at this period. By the side of these mature and elaborate compositions the reliefs of Bhārhut are stiff and awkward, and, as we recall their features to mind, we are conscious of the gulf which separates the two and of the great advance that sculpture must have made during the century or more that elapsed between them. The wonder is that these monuments could ever have been classed together or regarded as products of one and the same epoch.