Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s14.11

c12.s14.11

But of such objects of worship before the days of Aśoka-Maurya we have no remains extant, nor of the *Yakṣa-devatās* or spirits referred to in a general way or specifically by name in early Buddhist and Jaina texts. Attempts have been made on epigraphic reasons to identify the two round standing male figures from Patna in reddish-grey sandstone of the Chunar region and bearing *chaurīs* as those of *Yakṣas*; indeed behind the shoulder of one of these statues, on the scarf, is a short inscription paleographically assignable to about the first century A.D.—that may be read as : *Yakh(o) sa* (?) *Vatanandi*. That they are monumental sculptural representations of Yakshas there can hardly be any doubt, though persistent attempts were once made to identify them as statues of two kings of the Śaiśunāga dynasty of Magadha¹. This latter theory is no longer seriously pressed; but it is still generally held that they belong stylistically to the later phase of Mauryan art. I shall try to show later on that the so-called Mauryan polish which is the rock-argument on which the assumption is based can hardly be considered sufficient for their being labelled as Mauryan, and that not only paleographically but stylistically as well, they cannot belong to a period of art earlier than that represented at Sāñchī and in the early primitives of Mathurā.