Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s15.27

c12.s15.27

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.