Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s20.2

c12.s20.2

With all its urban, conscious and civilised quality, its advanced power of visualisation and full knowledge and comprehension of the third dimension, Maurya court art constitutes only an interlude, in the history of Indian art. Kramrisch rightly hits the point when she says, ‘in the organism of Indian art Mauryan sculpture has only marginal importance’². It was indeed a hot-house plant reared up by the will, care and patronage of a court heavily under the influence of foreign culture and ideology. In course of time the glass walls fell to pieces and the plant withered. Maurya court art failed to make any notable permanent contribution to the growth of Indian art except that it directly helped the fixation of the latter in permanent material. A most important exponent of Maurya court ideology in sculpture are the crowning lion figures which, we have seen, were conditioned by a plastic vision and artistic convention already fixed and determined within a foreign art tradition. They raise the presumption that they for the first time introduced into the realm of Indian Art a highly advanced power of visualisation and a fuller comprehension of the problem of the third dimension. But here a counter-hypothesis, I have already pointed out, presents itself. It is quite permissible to assume that these two essential qualities of high art were not unknown to Indian artists who used to work in wood and clay and shape images in fully rounded form. This assumption seems to find strong support not only from the spirit and appearance but also from the general conception, treatment and execution of the Dhauli elephant and the Rampurva bull which undoubtedly belong to a different art tradition. I have tried also to point out that the Patna Yakshas, the Didarganj Yakshiṇī, and the Lohānīpur Jaina images to an extent belong to the line of evolution of this tradition, though it must be admitted that the Maurya elephant and the bull belong qualitatively to a higher aesthetic level. This court art does not seem to have taken cognisance of another tradition of art, a more primitive, perhaps folk tradition of presumably some significance, that was hardly conscious of the third dimension and fully rounded form. This tradition came to be fixed in permanent material for the first time in Bhārhut where already the conflict between round volume and flat surface makes its appearance and gradually shows itself not only in the Baroda and Parkham Yakshas and the so-called Manasādevī of Parkham still in worship but also in the Patna Yakshas, the Lohānīpur images and some of the huge primitives of the early Mathurā school.