Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s18.14

c12.s18.14

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.