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Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s15: II. Socio-historical Background

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s15

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II. Socio-historical Background

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Any attempt at an explanation of the phenomenon referred to above must take into account the state of artistic effort and activities in India itself during the centuries immediately preceding that of the Mauryas, i.e. during the period of the Haryaṅka, the Śaiśunāga and the Nanda domination. Storeyed buildings presumably of wood and brick, were already widely known, and mention is made of round and square huts perhaps of wood and bamboo. An advanced knowledge of the use of metals like tin, lead, silver, copper and iron shaped and formed into objects meant for various domestic and other purposes is already attested by the later Vedic texts; and the *jātakas* reveal that there were eighteen different kinds of *śilpas* or arts and crafts including carpentry, smithery, leather-dressing and painting. Metal workers in general were probably known by the word *kamāra* (Skt. *karmakāra*), and there are definite evidences to suggest that these artists and craftsmen were organised into *śeṇis* or guilds. Localisation of certain industrial crafts also took place to the extent that an entire village or a particular locality in the town came to be designated according to the craft practised in the locality. The *jātakas* also afford a more or less vivid picture of contemporary city and village life, villages with scattered huts made of wood and bamboo and reed, cities with roads and lanes lined with buildings of brick and wood, all set off against the background of an agricultural, industrial and commercial life in small scale and within narrow proportions¹. If we set aside certain stories of the *Mahābhārata*, there is nothing else to suggest that the canvas of contemporary life was large and that it was conceived in any magnificent and monumental scale. Tribal and primitive was indeed the character of the social psychology of Northern India during all these centuries. This tribal and primitive outlook is also fully in evidence in the remains of the old city of Rājagṛiha with its walls and remains of dwellings built of rough cyclopean masonry², which is the one definite architectural example that can be said to belong to pre-Mauryan times.

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¹ *C. H. I.*, I. p. 206.

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² Fergusson, *History of Indian & Eastern Architecture*. 2nd Edn. I. pp. 75-76. For alleged pre-Mauryan antiquities see Coomaraswamy, *History of Indian and Indonesian Art*, p. 10 and notes, Lauriya-Nandangarh gold-plaque of a nude female, fig. 105.

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But a slow and steady widening of the tribal and primitive outlook was being effected in the political sphere. Already in the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* we hear of such sacrifices as the *Rājasūya* and the *Aindramahābhiṣeka*, of *sārvabhauma* kings, of paramount rule and of all-encompassing sovereignty. The same political conception of *rājā sārvabhauma* is repeated in *Baudhāyana Śrauta*- sūtra, and that of rāja chakkavatti in early Buddhist and Jaina texts¹. In reality however the normal political condition of northern India till the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. was not that of an empire of any considerable extent under a sārvabhauma monarch but it was that of separate small and independent states and kingdoms each under a king or tribal leader. It was only towards the third quarter of the fourth century B.C. that the ideal was partially achieved in the person of Mahāpadmananda who has been referred to in the Purāṇas as sarvarājocchettā, sarvakṣatrāntakaṇpaḥ and ekarāṭ, the supreme monarch, and one of his sons, the last of the dynasty, as the powerful monarch of the Prasioi and the Gangaridai, in the accounts of classical writers.

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¹ Keith, Rigveda Brāhmaṇas, 1920, p. 331 ; Sutta-nipāta, p. 99. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, part 2, p. 13 etc ; Chanda cities authorities in Beginnings of Art in Eastern India, pp. 13 ff.

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It is difficult to say whether the evolution of the wider political outlook was the outcome of natural historical process or was directly or indirectly conditioned by India's contact with the contemporary west-Asiatic world. In any case the chronological and historical background is significant and is worth consideration. Already in prehistoric times, the Indus valley civilisation formed a part of the civilisation that extended to ancient Sumer ; much later, the civilisation represented by the Rigveda was but a cognate of that represented by the Avestā. There is no reason to assume that this intimate relation of India with Iran and the ancient Asiatic west lapsed at any time during the centuries that followed. Indeed, from about 800 B.C. almost continuous contact of Aryanised India with Iran can either be inferred from actual remains of art objects, from lithic records, and from cognate political and cultural ideas and ideologies. In the sixth century B.C. part of northern India went under the political domination of Iran, and gradually the Indus came to form the eastern boundary of the wide Iranian empire of Darius ; indeed this part of India came to be politically organised into the 20th satrapy of that empire². Darius describes himself in his inscriptions as Kshayathiyanam Kshayathiya, the King of kings, the great King³; he was in reality a sārvabhauma monarch of the old Indian conception, an *ekaraṭ* like Mahāpadmananda. Indeed the Achaemenid dynasty was the first to evolve and give reality to the idea of imperial suzerainty which a century later was partially achieved by the Nandas, and fully by the Mauryas¹. Certainly no contemporary borrowing can at once be postulated but it is likely that both India and Iran participated in a common politico-historical process.

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² Ray Chaudhuri, PHAI 4th edn. pp. 193-6.

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³ A Suez Inscription of Darius in Tolman, Ancient Persian Lexicon & Texts, New York, 1908, p. 50.

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¹ In West Asia the idea of the conquest of the 'four regions' or 'four quarters' originated with the Kings of Babylonia and Assyria. But it was actually realised later by the Achaemenian monarchs, notably Cyrus, his son Cambyses, and Darius, son of Hystaspes. In a Suez Incription commemorating the completion of the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea Darius proudly records : 'I (am) Darius, the great King, King of kings, king of countries possessing all people, (king) of this great earth far and wide.' The phrases are almost exactly such as we find in the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* and *Baudhāyana Śrauta Sūtra*. Also see Chanda, *Beginnings of Art*......pp. 17-20.

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This is more evident in the domain of art and general culture. Indeed early Indian art can be viewed and understood fully only against the background of age-old but very potent and effective Indo-Sumerian and Indo-Iranian contacts maintained through long centuries. In Maurya, Śuṅga, Andhra and Kuṣhāṇa art, there is a rich treasure of art and decorative motifs, ornamentations, devices and patterns that we meet with for the first time and that suggest 'parallels in Sumerian, Hittite, Assyrian, Mycenaean, Cretan, Trojan, Lycian, Phoenician, Achaemenid and Scythian cultures'. Coomaraswamy gives a long list of such common elements and technical analogies, and finally argues that 'so far as its constituent elements are concerned, and apart from any question of style, there is comparatively little in Indian decorative art that is peculiar to India, and much that India shares with Western Asia.' It is difficult to disagree with Coomaraswamy when further he says :

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'All this amounts to proof that the themes and motifs of pre-Maurya art cannot have differed very greatly from those of Maurya and Śuṅga ; fantastic animals, palmettes, rosettes, and bell-capitals must have been common elements of the craftsman's repertory under the Nandas as in the time of Aśoka. India, in centuries and perhaps millenniums B.C., was an integral part of an 'Ancient East' that extended from the Mediterranean to the Ganges Valley'².

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² Coomaraswamy, *History of Indian and Indonesian Art*, pp. 11-14 where the whole aspect is fully discussed. Also Combaz-*L'Inde et L'orient Classique* (Paris, 1937).

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Apart from India forming an integral part of an ‘Ancient East’ and sharing in a common cultural heritage from very early times, there is more or less definite evidence of intimate cultural contact of India with Iran in particular from about the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. The North-west and the Indus valley forming a part of Darius's empire made contacts with Iran easier still. This intimate contact must have been responsible for certain elements in Buddhist and later Brahmanical mythology, tradition, worship and iconography, especially those connected with the cults of the Sun and Fire¹. It was also responsible for the origin and evolution of the Kharoshṭhī script in about the fifth or fourth century B.C. An Aramaic inscription belonging to about the fourth century B.C. has actually been found at Taxila². The Haryaṅkas, the Śaiśunāgas and the Nandas must have more or less felt the pressure of this contact, but since their dominions lay far away from the regions where presumably the effects of the impact of the two civilisations were directly felt, Eastern India was perhaps only indirectly touched by Iranian contacts.

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¹ Coomaraswamy, p. 22.

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² Marshall, *A Guide to Taxila*, pp. 9, 77-78.

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With the coming of the Mauryas to power on the throne of Pāṭaliputra, with the building up of an all-India empire by Chandragupta extending up to modern Afghanistan and therefore touching almost what had once been the heart of Achaemenid power and culture, with the establishment of intimate friendly relations with contemporary Hellenistic powers, and friendly contact of Maurya kings and court with Greek political and cultural representatives from Graeco-Bactrian courts and kingdoms, the situation took a new turn. The Achaemenid empire had long gone to dust and India had ceased to form a part of that empire. In 330 B. C. Alexander the Great overthrew the once mighty Persian Empire, but in the process of consolidating his conquest the Greek conqueror came under the overpowering influence of Achaemenian imperialism and Achaemenian art and culture. Plutarch has a long and vivid description of how Alexander behaved himself at Persepolis and how he worked for a fusion of the cultures of Greece and of Iran of the Achaemenid monarchs. Donned in the robes of Iranian monarchs he used to sit on the throne of Darius under a golden canopy. He himself married Darius's daughter Statira, and married his Greek friends to Iranian ladies; one of these friends was Seleucus, later known as Seleucus Nicator, who married Apama, the daughter of Spitamenes. Not satisfied with having simply adopted somewhat the Persian mode of dress, Alexander, says Plutarch, ‘accommodated himself more than ever to the manner of the Asiatics, and at the same time persuaded them to adopt some of the Macedonian fashions; for by a mixture of both he thought an union might be promoted much better than by force, and his authority maintained even when he was at a distance. For the same reason he selected thirty thousand (Persian) boys and gave them masters to instruct them in Grecian literature as well as train them to arms in the Macedonian manner’.¹

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¹ Plutarch quoted by Chanda, *Beginnings*......p. 18.

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The same process seems to have been fully at work in the realm of art. Colonial Hellenistic art was slowly coming under the influence of Persian art, specially of Persian *motifs*, patterns and designs on the one hand, while Persian art itself began to feel the pressure of Ionian and Hellenistic influences onwards from the fifth century B.C.² This pressure became active during and after the Achaemenid period, so that when the Mauryas came into intimate contact with the colonial Greeks of Western Asia, both Achaemenid and Hellenistic art-traditions had largely influenced each other.

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² Sarre, *Die Kunst des Alten Persiens*, pp. 20-25; Carotti, *A History of Art*, I, pp. 93-794; Bell, *Early Architecture in Western Asia*, p. 231.

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After the withdrawal of the Macedonian army of Alexander and the establishment of an alliance of Chandragupta Maurya with Seleucus, the Mauryas came into very intimate friendly relations with the Seleucid Greek houses, and this relation continued from generation to generation. Besides contracting a matrimonial alliance Chandragupta repeatedly received Megasthenes as an ambassador from Seleucus, is reported to have sent Seleucus some strange Indian drugs presumably through his own envoy, and is further said to have been used to offer sacrifices in Hellenic manner to Alexander's altars on the Hyphases. The ceremonial at the court of this king described by classical writers also reveals Achaemenian influence¹. His son Bindusāra had also in his court a Greek envoy, Deimachus of Plataea, sent by Antiochus I, son of Seleucus. Bindusāra also, like his father seems to have been a Hellenophil; he wrote back to Antiochus requesting him to buy and send on to him sweet wine, dried figs and a Greek sophist. From Antiochus came the reply: ‘We shall send you dried figs and sweet wine, but it is not lawful in Greece to sell a sophist.’ Diodorus speaks of a Greek author Iamboulus by name who found his way to the king of Palibothra, and this king of Palibothra, presumably Bindusāra or at least one of the first three Maurya monarchs, ‘had a great love for the Grecians.’ Aśoka’s friendly relations with the Yavanas or the Greek states of Western Asia and Egypt are well-known;

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the world that he claims to have conquered by his policy of Dhammavijaya was preeminently this Hellenistic world; he arranged for the medical treatment of men and cattle, among others, in the dominions of Antiochus Theos and his neighbours; and it is not unlikely that his description of himself as devānampiya Pijadasi is an echo of the deification of kings current among Alexander’s successors in Hellenistic Orient. Both Megasthenes and Kauṭilya refer to a State department run and maintained specifically for the purpose of looking after foreigners² who evidently were quite numerous not only in the capital city of Pāṭaliputra but in other provincial capitals and trade centres. There can hardly be any doubt that these foreigners were mostly colonial Greeks and a very large majority of them were merchants and businessmen. Indeed in the third century B.C. a caravan highway ran from Taxila via Kandahar, Persepolis and Susa to Seleuceia on the Tigris, while another old main road ran via Kandahar, Herat, Hecatompylos, Ecbatana and Seleuceia and was joined by the Taxila-Kabul-Bactria route³. Taxila, it is well known, was the seat of an important Maurya province, and from here a great highway ran direct to connect Pāṭaliputra with the Hellenic east. Besides, there was also a coastal sea-borne trade route to Seleuceia along the Persian Gulf and up the Tigris, and to Egypt following the coastline.

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It is this trade route that explains the Aramaic inscription referred to above and datable in the fourth century B. C. It was along this route also that foreigners including envoys, Greek traders, travellers, artists and craftsmen must have flocked to Mauryan India in such numbers as to oblige the State to maintain a department to look after their comfort and well-being. This intimate contact indeed explains such finds as the fragmentary handle of a terracotta vase showing Alexander's head in lion's skin and recovered from Taxila¹, or random finds from Sārnāth, Basarh and the Patna region of terracotta pieces of distinctive Hellenistic appearance or with definite Hellenistic motifs and design². That they belong probably to a later date does not minimise the importance of the very intimate relations the Maurya court maintained with the Hellenic east; rather they point out that even after the decline and downfall of the Mauryas parts of India continued to remain in touch with the Hellenistic world. Within a century after the death of Aśoka a Greek army penetrated as far east as Mādhyamika near Chitor and Sāketa near Ayodhyā.

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¹ Hultzsch, C.I.I. I, pp. xxxiv-xxxv, xlii,; C.H.I. I, p. 433; Bevan, *The House of Seleucus*, Lond., 1902, I, p. 297; Smith, *Early History of India*, pp. 128 ff; ‘Persian Influence on Mauryan India’, *I. A.* 1905, pp. 201-3.

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² McCrindle, *Ancient India*, p. 54; Kauṭilya *Arthaśāstra*, Shamasastry’s edn. p. 144 (II 36).

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³ Tarn, W. W., *Hellenistic Civilisation*, Chap. VII, pp. 199-214; Jouguet, P., *Macedonian Imperialism*, pp. 93-107, 353, 358.

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¹ A. S. R. Pt. I, 1920-21, p. 20, Pl. XVI, Fig. 2.

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² Bachhofer, op. cit. p. 12, Pl. 13; A. S. R. Pt. I., 1917-18, p. 27 Pl. XVI, Fig. 2; ibid, 1913-14, p. 182, No. 791, Pl. xliii, fig. (h). Read with this Nearchus's statement to the effect that 'the Indians quickly learnt to make Greek articles such as the scrapers and oilflasks used by athletes'. C.H.I. I, p. 418. For the Hellenophilism of the Mauryas see also Ray Chaudhuri, P. H. A. I. 4th edn., p. 245.

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The Maurya kings and the Maurya court were indeed Hellenophils, but it was evidently their Hellenophilism that also brought them into an indirect contact with the art and culture of the Achaemenids. The grandiose and magnificent monuments of the Achaemenid monarchs were still standing when the Mauryas came to exercise all India suzerainty and Maurya art was making its appearance. Certain Achaemenian forms and motifs had presumably already migrated to the Punjab and the Indus valley during the Achaemenian occupation of the region. Exacavations at the Bhir mound at Taxila yielded from the pre-Hellenistic strata a scaraboid of steatite exhibiting a winged stag which is reminiscent of similar objects of Achaemenian origin¹. ‘The Indian punch-marked silver coinage struck on the Persian standard perhaps represented the Achaemenian coinage for India’². But even after the extinction of Achaemenian power importation of Achaemenian art objects to India seems to have continued. Curtius, Diodorus, and Arrian state that Alexander presented to the king of Taxila among other things a large number of gold and silver vessels and an enormous quantity of Babylonian and Persian embroideries from the treasury of old Persian monarchs³. It has also been pointed out that a few minor antiquities found in the upper strata of the Bhir mound excavations ‘reflect the influence of Achaemenian art.’ Among these, four bangles of thin beaten gold terminating in lion’s heads, and a fragment of pottery from the side of a vase decorated with the conventional leaf design and reminiscent of the capitals of well-known Aśoka pillars, are particularly noteworthy. Moreover a polished sandstone head from Sārnāth wearing a crenellated crown, the method of wearing the waist cloth without the Kaccha as we find in the two Patna Yaksha statues in the Indian Museum, and the coiled armlets decorated spirally and terminating in a Dragon’s head, of the same statues, inevitably recall Achaemenian parallels⁴. It is evident that the trade routes referred to above opened up avenues through which Maurya India came to acquire more direct and intimate contact with Medo-Achaemenian art and culture, perhaps through Greek intermediaries.

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¹ A. S. R. Pt. I, 1919—20, p. 23, Pl. XI. fig. 2.

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² Camb. Anc. Hist. VI., p. 402 ; C. H. I., I, pp. 319—44.

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³ C. H. I. I. p. 359 ; Smith Early History of India, 4th edn. pp. 65—66.

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⁴ Mitra, ‘Origin of the Bell-Capital’, I. H. Q. VII, pp. 229—230.

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But more important evidence of Achaemenian cultural influence on the Maurya court and Maurya cultural ideology is afforded by the accounts of the city and royal palace of Pāṭaliputra left by classical authors, evidently following Megasthenes, and by the actual remains of the same city and palace unearthed by Waddell and Spooner⁵. Strabo says that the city of Palibothra was situated at the confluence of the Ganges and the Erannoboas (Hiraṇyavāha, the modern Son) ; it was 80 stadia in length and 15 in breadth and was of the shape of a parallelogram. The city was surrounded by a wooden wall pierced with loop-holes for the discharge of arrows, crowned with 560 towers and provided with 60 gates. In sumptuousness and magnificence, according to Strabo, Pāṭaliputra compared very favourably with Susa and Ecbatana. Waddell's excavations actually laid bare the remains of what had been once the city wall, and Spooner later brought to light remains of huge wooden buildings at Bulandibagh and Kumrahar, both near Patna. The remains of one of these buildings are of particular significance—those of a pillared hall in which stone columns were employed to support the roof. Of the eighty pillars that had once stood on a wooden platform and supported a wooden roof Spooner was able to discover the entire lower part of at least one in almost perfect condition—it is more or less like an Aśokan pillar, smooth, highly polished and made of grey Chunar sandstone.

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Writing about Indian towns Arrian says, ‘All their towns which are down beside the rivers or the sea are made of wood ; for towns built of brick would never hold out for any length of time with the rains on the one hand, and on the other, the rivers which rise above their banks and spread a sheet of water over the plains. But the towns which are built on elevated places out of reach, these are built of brick and clay.’ The excavations of Waddell and Spooner admirably confirm what we are told by Strabo and Arrian, and constitute one more proof of the fact that before the employment of stone for building purposes, wood was generally the only material for even the most sumptuous and magnificent buildings. Spooner's excavations however revealed for the first time that stone was employed for building purposes in at least one building of the Maurya royal city, and it was a pillared hall. That the magnificent palaces of Pāṭaliputra reminded Megasthenes of the palaces of Susa and Ecbatana is not without significance when it is remembered that the Maurya Pillared Hall reminded Spooner of the famous Hall of Hundred Columns erected at Persepolis by Darius the Great. ‘Whereas no other structure of really early date in ancient India disclosed,’ says Spooner, ‘an arrangement of pillars in square bays over the whole floor the hall at Kumrahar did show this otherwise unparalleled arrangement, and this was identical with the arrangement of the pillars in the Achaemenian Hall.

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The columns themselves moreover showed a technique in their polished surface which is not only known to have been un-Indian, and outside the line of Indian architectural development, but which again is identical with Persepolitan workmanship'. Apart from the question of the origin and morphology of the Aśokan pillars to which we shall have occasion to turn later on, there can hardly be any doubt that the Maurya Pillared Hall owed its inspiration and general design to the Hall of Hundred Columns erected by Darius. We have it on the authority of classical writers that Chandragupta's palace at Pāṭaliputra consisted of halls whose gilded pillars were adorned with golden vines and silver birds; indeed fragments of golden vines have been discovered in the excavations at Kumrahar. We know that the halls of the palaces of Ecbatana had gilded pillars constructed of cedar and cypress and golden vines of the pillars invariably recall the vines hanging over the couch of Darius—a gift of the Lydian Pythias and perhaps of Ionian workmanship.

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It is difficult to say whether the Maurya Pillared Hall at Pāṭaliputra was the conception of Chandragupta himself or one of his successors—personally I think it was built at the direction of Aśoka—but there can be no doubt that one of the three early Maurya emperors was responsible for it, nor is it unlikely that 'this adoption of the Persepolitan style of building at Pāṭaliputra was not the normal result of the contact of the Achaemenian and Indian sculptures but was due to conscious adoption of the plan of the Achaemenian Hall of Public Audience by the Mauryan emperor (Aśoka) as a part of the paraphernalia of his imperialism....'¹.

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⁵ McCrindle, Waddell and Spooner, op. cit.

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¹ Chanda, *Beginnings*......p. 12.

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It has been argued with some force that Mauryan imperialism as revealed in the inscriptions of Aśoka was largely influenced by the imperial ideology of the Hellenistic and Achaemenian monarchs². This may not be altogether unlikely, but be that as it may, the fact remains that the inscriptions themselves reveal the extent to which Aśoka was indebted to his great Achaemenian predecessor Darius, not only for the idea of making his royal edicts known throughout his empire but also for the form of the inscriptions themselves¹. At the end of the Susian version of the Behistun inscription of Darius we have the following :

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² Ibid, p. 17-20.

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¹ Ibid, pp. 21-26.

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‘(Thus) saith Darius, the king : By the grace of Auramazda I made inscriptions in another fashion....such as was not formerly ....and it was written and I....then I sent the same inscriptions into all lands, and the people....’

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The duplicate copies were evidently written on leather or brick as the one discovered by Koldeway suggests. This was also the arrangement made by Aśoka for the circulation of his edicts (R.E. XIV, Kaliṅga Edict I, P. E. VII). The very idea indeed of recording royal orders and directions on such permanent material as rocks (and pillars) seems to have been inspired by Achaemenian practice. In respect of the form of the Aśokan inscriptions Senart long ago pointed out their strong resemblance with that of the inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings. The edicts of Aśoka begin with the usual formula *Devanampiya Piyadasi evamāha* which according to Senart ‘is an absolutely isolated example in Indian epigraphy....In the entire series of the inscriptions of the Achaemenides, from Darius to Artaxerxes Ochus, the phrase *thatey Darayavaush Kshayathiya*, “thus saith the king Darius,” or its equivalent *thatey Kshayarsha*, etc., inevitably forms the preamble of each of the proclamations. In both cases, this phrase in the third person is immediately succeeded by the use of the first person, and we are still further justified in drawing attention to this curious fact that, again in both cases the same word—*dipi*, *lipi*—is used to designate the inscriptions, and that, as we have seen, we are led to admit, on altogether independent grounds, that the Indian form of the word was originally borrowed from Persia.’ Aśoka’s peculiar way of exhorting people to follow the laws of Dhamma also seems to have been adopted from Achaemenian practice initiated by Darius in his inscriptions (Behistun and Naksh-i-Rustam inscriptions).²

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² Ind. Ant. XX. pp. 255-56.

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Two important facts emerge. First, that whatever extant remains we can lay our hands on as definitely belonging to the Maurya Period are products of the Maurya Court, i.e. they were worked out by orders of the Maurya monarchs and perhaps also under their direct supervision. Secondly, that this court and its presiding lords were all ardent Hellenophils and were largely under the influence of Achaemenian art and culture at the same time. It is to this second factor that we can ascribe the fixation of Indian art in permanent materials during this period for the first time and the handling of stone for sculptural and architectural purposes with perfect ease and efficiency. At the same time it has to be recognised that there existed in India a pre-Mauryan art mainly practised in wood and partly in sun-dried brick, clay, ivory, metal and mineral stone. Admittedly this art could hardly conceive life and things in huge proportions and large dimensions; tribal and primitive outlook circumscribed the vision of the artists and craftsmen who must also have been handicapped by the very nature of the materials they used. But this art happened to be the repository of certain patterns, designs, and motifs that India shared in common with the rest of the early Asiatic world.

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For the rest, we know from Megasthenes, Kauṭilya and the Inscriptions of Aśoka himself that the Maurya administration was a highly centralised bureaucracy; and the Maurya monarch nothing short of a benevolent autocrat. Aśoka's *dhammavijaya* was more an imperial policy than a religious missionary movement and his moral exhortations to his people had almost the force of law behind them. He had even gone to the length of regulating the social and religious life of his people according to his conception of *Dhamma*. The king and the court were both highly conscious of their power and their imperial glory—Aśoka's inscriptions breathe the very air of this consciousness. And if the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭilya is to be believed, law, order and precision were the watchwords of the Mauryan government. This is surprisingly reflected in the writings of the inscriptions themselves; not only are they beautifully executed, but they are indeed remarkable for their clarity, orderliness and precision; every single letter is cut into the stone with accuracy and care, lines are more often than not straight and well-ordered, and mistakes, considering the enormous output, few and far between. The socio-economic policy of the Mauryan State was also highly centralised and monopolistic.

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Mauryan art has to be viewed and understood against this historical, cultural, and sociological background. This would help us to understand the outlook and ideology of Mauryan art.

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