Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s14.18

c12.s14.18

and what the Maurya emperors did was only to initiate the artists and art-guilds into the use of stone and make them translate their traditional skill in terms of a new material. Such an explanation is certainly admissible; one has only to read through the description of the city and royal palace of Pāṭaliputra left by classical writers¹, and examine the design and execution of many an architectural element of the Maurya, Śuṅga and other early Indian monuments, e.g. the pillars, the railings, the gates, the Chaitya facades, etc. and be convinced of the force of the argument². But the very fact that stone henceforward became the material *par excellence* for Indian plastic art is by itself significant; equally significant is it that stone sculpture when it first comes to view in India during the Maurya period is already the expression of a civilised and sophisticated and fully developed art that had generations of artistic effort, experience and tradition behind it; that it is a work in the round, it exists by itself and is borne by its own volume and strength, and that it has an inherent technical and psychological character that the jeweller's or carpenter's art fails to explain and account for. Indeed, past artistic tradition and the art of the wood, clay, ivory, mineral, stone and metal worker in howsoever large a scale and with whatever technical skill and efficiency cannot fully explain the art tradition Mauryan sculptures represent, the technical skill and efficiency of the Mauryan sculptor who worked in stone of huge and heavy proportions, and the atmosphere the sculptures themselves breathe.