Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s18: Alleged Mauryan Sculptures

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s18

Language: English

Alleged Mauryan Sculptures

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Besides the animal sculptures described and discussed above, quite a considerable number of independent figure sculptures in the round and of various size and proportion and a few fragments of reliefs have been ascribed to the Maurya period¹ mainly on the ground of their having the so-called Mauryan polish on them and their being carved out of grey sandstone from Chunar. These are insufficient grounds indeed. The art of giving a lustrous polish to the stone, the Maurya artists learnt evidently from the Achaemenians and once they practised it in large scale and made it current, it is only in the nature of things that the practice would continue for some time at least, and at least in stray instances even when the power and authority of the Maurya court had vanished and Maurya court art that apparently found in this polish an expression of imperial glory and splendour had become a thing of the past. Nor is the argument of a common place of origin so far as the material is concerned more potent. Stone as the material *par excellence* for sculptural work was a sort of a new learning with the Mauryan court artists, and this material was quarried at Chunar. It was handled for at least a few generations and found to respond very well to the hammer and chisel of the stone-sculptor. It is only likely therefore that later sculptors would continue at least for some time to have their material imported from the same quarry until they struck at other quarries and found their stone good enough to meet their requirements. It is therefore on the arguments of conception and style that we must take our stand to argue whether they can be labelled as Mauryan or not.

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¹ Marshall, Chanda, Kramrisch, Coomaraswamy, Bachhofer, indeed all authorities have so far ascribed these sculptures to the Maurya period.

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The two Patna Yakshas almost identical in form and appearance, conception and treatment, dress and ornament, and now in the Indian Museum come first in the list of alleged Mauryan sculptures. It deserves consideration that both the statues have on the scarf of their shoulder a line of Brāhmī inscription that has paleographically been dated round about the beginning of the Christian era, and that helps to identify the statues as those of Yakshas. No reason is adduced why the statues should not be considered as belonging to the same period as that of the inscriptions. The so-called Mauryan polish on which the main argument for a Mauryan date rests is conspicuous only on the upper half of the bodies, which may be taken to point to the fact that the practice of Maurya court art was already on the wane. While there is nothing peculiarly Mauryan about this couple there are elements that seem to connect them with some of the sculptures on the eastern gate of the Great Stūpa at Sāñchī on the one hand and the Kushāṇa school of Mathurā on the other. The heaviness, the almost archaic stolidity and weighty volume, the conflict between fully rounded and modelled volume as seen in the arms, breast and abdomen on the one hand and flat surface at the back on the other seem to suggest a close parallel with the huge heavy and ‘primitive’ Boddhisattvas of the Mathurā school. The treatment of the garment when it does not cling to the body as volumes separate from the body is a particular characteristic of the Kushāṇa school of Mathurā. The same remark applies to the treatment of ornaments. Where the garment clings to the body it is treated as a wet cloth and is almost invisible except for the parallel ridges that indicate the folds. A similar treatment of the garment characterises the Didarganj Yakshi also, to be considered later. On the other hand so far as general shape and appearance of the upper part of the body and the quality and character of the modelling are concerned, a kinship with the art of the bigger reliefs on the eastern gate of the Great Stūpa at Sāñchī seems to be admissible.

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Much less known than either the Patna Yakshas or the two other colossal polished sandstone standing statues from Parkham and Didarganj are the two torsos of naked Jaina images, both recovered from Lohanipur near Bankipur, Patna, and now in the Patna Museum. The larger torso, a free and round sculpture carved out of Chunar sandstone, has the high Maurya polish on it ; while the smaller one, identical in appearance and style and of the same material has no polish on it. They have both been found together on the same level underground along with a silver punch-marked coin which Jayaswal says ‘precedes Maurya coinage’. He ascribes the larger torso to the Maurya period and the unpolished smaller one to the ‘Sungan or later’, on what grounds he does not state¹. If one is to go by style and appearance, both the torsos must belong to the same period which may not be far out of date from the Patna Yakshas on the one hand and the Parkham Yaksha on the other. In their tight and stiff modelling, in their fully rounded arms and thighs and in their general earthy heaviness of form they have a kinship with the Patna statues; both pairs are characterised by a smooth and lifeless inertia, and by a comparatively flat surface treatment of their backs. The Lohanipur statues, moreover, are more primitive and archaic in outlook and appearance, heavy and a little bit unbalanced in proportion which seem to link them with the Baroda and Parkham Yakshas to be discussed later.

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¹ Jayaswal, ‘Jaina Image of the Maurya Period’, *J. B. O. R. S.*, XXII, pp. 130-32 and plates.

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The same conflict in a rather accentuated form of fully rounded volume and flat surface, the same complex relation of ornaments and garments to the body, the same heaviness and archaism, rigidity and lifeless smoothness, characterise what remains of the colossal sandstone statue of a Yaksha² recovered from Baroda near Parkham and another slightly smaller but comparatively well-preserved Yaksha statue from Parkham itself (both now in the Mathurā Museum), the latter having the same polish as that on the Mauryan columns. There can be no doubt that in all these statues we have a clear expression of the weighty and imposing earthiness that traditional Indian imagination connects with its Yakshas and Yakshiṇīs, gods and goddesses of material plenty and physical welfare. The lightly bent knees and the comparatively thin legs of the standing Parkham figure have some kinship with those of the Maṇibhadra Yaksha statue from Pawaya near Gwalior³, while the frank and unconditional frontality of both Baroda and Parkham statues, attaching little or no importance to the back reminds one again of primitive Bodhisattvas of the Mathurā school. Compared to the Patna Yakshas the Parkham specimen is more stiff and archaic in appearance, more rough and crude in execution; but in the relation of ornament and dress with the body and in the quality of the tight and stiff modelling it betrays the same essential characteristics. In its upper part it shows no doubt a tendency towards flattened surface treatment, but in the lower half fully rounded and powerfully modelled mass is in full evidence giving the legs a lively form and appearance in strong contrast to the torso with a protruding and deformed abdomen that is possibly an individual characteristic. The flowing drapery which is treated as transparent where it clings to the body, and as separate though in thin and flat volumes where it is gathered together, is indicated at the front by incised wave lines as in Bhārhut and at the ends by a single rounded ridge. It seems that such treatment of drapery as we see in the Parkham image can in no way be dated earlier than Bhārhut, and similar shape and modelled form of the legs cannot be earlier than the first century B.C. In any case the Baroda and Parkham statues constitute what we may call the earliest Mathurā primitives and the initial chapter of the Mathurā school of sculpture. They have hardly anything to connect them with Mauryan sculpture of known date and locality, and are perhaps later than even the Patna Yakshas discussed above.

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² Coomaraswamy, *History of Indian & Indonesian Art*, p. 17, fig. 15; Vogel, ‘Mathurā School of Sculpture’, *A. S. R.*, 1909-10, p. 76, Pl. XXVIII, a.

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³ Bachhofer, *Early Indian Sculpture*, I, plate 62.

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Artistically the Didarganj Yakshiṇī is the best of the series and can in no way be considered as archaic or primitive. In the easy and light stoop and forward movement of the upper part of the body helped by a slight bend of the right knee-joint, the narrow waist and full round breasts with the necklace hanging rhythmically along and between the breast-lines, the broad hips, the shapely legs gradually tapering down to the thin ankles decorated by heavy and fully jewelled ornaments, the style of doing and decorating the hair, and not the least in the sensitiveness of flesh as revealed in what remains of the modelling of the abdomen, the chin and the region round the eyes, but more fully and clearly of the back—one witnesses here perhaps an earliest urban, conscious and sophisticated female type and form immortalised in later Indian art and literature. The fact that the treatment of its ornaments and drapery, especially of the latter, is the same as that of the Patna Yakshas is no reason why it should be labelled as primitive or considered as belonging to the same period or phase of early Indian art. The statue, plastically fully round, is bound by no ‘law of frontality’ and is meant to be seen from all sides—it has no primitivity whatsoever about it. Its heavy but loose mass of hair, its full soft bosoms and the firmness of the flesh at the back, and its attenuated waist with soft abdominal muscles and the broad hips at once recall the still daintier and more lively Yakshiṇīs of the Mathurā reliefs of the second century A.D. which are characterised by fully round and lively modelling of their limbs, scarfs and anklets. Indeed the Didarganj Yakshiṇī cannot be very much earlier than the latter, in spite of so-called Mauryan polish or its material which is Chunar sandstone.

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These life size, plastically round statues belong thus to different aspects and phases of Indian art. They are all Indian in form and appearance; and in style and treatment they have hardly any relation with the court art of the Mauryas. The third dimension was already mastered by the courtly Indian tradition, in the Dhauli elephant and the Rampurva bull for example, so that the conception and execution of either the Didarganj Yakshiṇī or perhaps the Patna Yakshas presented them with no new problem. Indeed they belong to the same line of evolution, but at later stages, reflecting on themselves the currents of the flowing tradition and fashions of contemporary practice. The Baroda and Parkham statues along with a seated Yakshiṇī (now in worship as Manasādevī) from Mathurā¹ on the other hand belong perhaps to a different conception and tradition altogether, a primitive folk tradition much older and more rooted to the soil, that was current and co-existent with the Maurya court art but of which the latter knew nothing. The fixation of that art in permanent materials is first to be seen at Bhārhut and later in various other places where it slowly and steadily grappled stage by stage and with varying measure of success with the problem of the third dimension. The Baroda and Parkham statues along with others of still later date represent the different stages in that direction.

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¹ Chanda, ‘Mathura School of Sculpture,’ A. S. R. 1922–23, p. 164; A. S. R. 1920–21, Pl. XVIII.

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Two male heads and three small fragments of head, of the same material and similarly polished, all from Sārnāth, have usually been assigned to the Maurya period for no other reason than that they are carved out of Chunar sandstone and have the so-called Mauryan polish on them. It is very likely as Coomaraswamy surmises on the ground of their ‘extraordinary actuality’ and ‘marked individuality’ that these are ‘parts of portrait-figures, and presumably portraits of donors’. Their head-dress consisting of either a fillet with a laurel wreath or a mural crown is certainly reminiscent of Hellenistic motifs. Similar fragments of stone heads with identical head-dresses hail also from Bhita and Mathurā which along with the Sārnāth examples constitute a ‘well-marked stylistic group’, but there is nothing to connect them definitely with Mauryan art. All that they—together with some terracotta heads and figures from Mathurā, Sārnāth, Basarh, Bulandibagh, Kumrahar, and other places with Greek motifs on their head-dress and sometimes even foreign facial types—prove is that Greek motifs and types along with Hellenistic provincial art had migrated as far east as the Ganges valley¹. Since Hellenistic contacts were potent and effective even after the fall of the Mauryas, migration and adoption of Hellenistic art forms and motifs at later periods of history cannot be ruled altogether out of consideration.

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¹ Bachhofer, *Early Indian Sculpture*, I, pp. 12–14, plates 12 and 13; Coomaraswamy, *History of Indian & Indonesian Art*, pp. 19–20, figs 18, 19, 20, 22, 23. Fig. 21 of Coomaraswamy is much later still.

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A few other fragmentary reliefs have also been assigned to the Mauryan period, again without sufficient reason. Intensely lyrical and qualitatively of a very subtle significance is the figure worked in high relief out of the fragment of an arch, of a young sorrowing lady². The soft and delicate modelling of the nude upper body nowhere so sensitively rendered as in the back and the fresh young breasts, the soft linear rhythm and the compositional unity has no parallel in early Indian art. Indeed its plastic and linear expressiveness does not fit in against the background of either Maurya or Śuṅga art. The style and treatment of the hair, ornaments and garment have indeed a primitive heaviness of form but the modelling and linear composition are very much in advance. Another relief from Bhita¹ also shows decided advance in general appearance, pose and movement, and from the character of relief composition, facial type and surface treatment it cannot be dated earlier than the reliefs of Bodhgayā and Sāñchi.

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² Kramrisch, *Grundzuge der Indischen Kunst*, *Indian Sculpture*, p. 12, fig. 11.

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¹ Coomaraswamy, op. cit., p. 20, fig. 19.

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A considerable number of terracottas said to have been recovered from the lowest, or nearly the lowest, levels at several widely separated sites, extending from Pāṭaliputra to Taxila² have sometimes been assigned to the Maurya period, mainly on grounds of style and appearance. Kramrisch and Gordon have drawn pointed attention to the hazards of trying to date terracottas—moulded or modelled—on ground of style or that of appearance³. Moreover, excavation methods pursued in India till very lately were not such as to make level or stratification a dependable argument for determining chronological sequence, so far as terracottas at least are concerned. Most terracotta pieces, except perhaps a few from the ancient site of Pāṭaliputra, that had originally been labelled Mauryan, are now being ascribed to the Śuṅga, Kuṣāṇa or early Gupta periods⁴.