Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s14.4

c12.s14.4

The earliest that the Ganges valley is alleged to have offered to us in the shape and form of what may be called an art object is a small gold tablet representing a naked woman standing on her legs in symmetrical rigidity, with exaggerated hips and sexual organs, heavy and clumsy ornaments and rigidly angular composition. It was dug out of a tomb near Lauriya, was identified by Bloch, the explorer, as the iconic representation of the Earth goddess, and was ascribed by him to about the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. There can hardly be any doubt that such images in metal as well as in clay served as fetish symbols ; there are passages in the *Rig Veda* and later also in the *Grihya sūtras* which can be interpreted to suggest that figures of gods and animals were fashioned in metal and clay for such purposes¹. A small gold tablet similar to that found at Lauriya and a small gold figure, forming part of the relics from the ruins of the Piprahva stūpa, evidently Buddhistic, and belonging to a period not earlier than that of the Mauryas², reveals the same motive and treatment as those of the Lauriya tablet, so that the latter can hardly be ascribed to so early a period as Bloch does. Some of the oldest terracotta pieces recovered by Marshall from the ruins of Bhita seem also to belong more or less to this category³; their motive, if not their treatment, is the same, so that all these objects may be taken to be typical representations of a primitive phase of imagination centering round fetishistic beliefs. They are not definitely the products of any organised and conscious art movement in any considerable scale, though primitive faiths and beliefs may have helped and favoured the development of sculptural and architectural art in India at a later stage of history.