Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c6.s3.130

c6.s3.130

The plastic arts, particularly sculpture, appear to be more difficult of execution and perfection than the pictorial, at first sight. Obviously the manual labour is greater and the knowledge of anatomy must be higher owing to the need to show the third dimension. However, the creative excellence and uniqueness are distinctly superior in painting which soars to limit less heights, in imagination and finery. Sculpture flourished side by side with, if not to the same extent as, painting in the days of the *Jātaka* stories. Unfortunately no specimen of sculptural achievements has survived which can be satisfactorily identified as belonging to this period, though the sculptor’s art is as old as the Indus valley, as the antiquities discovered at Mohenjodāro and Harappā clearly testify.⁶