Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s15.2

c12.s15.2

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.