MAURYA, SUNGA AND EARLY ANDHRA PERIODS Maurya : Asoka.—With the Maurya period, and especially the reign of Asoka, we meet for the first time with sculptural and architectural monuments in stone. These fall more or less definitely into two groups, (I) the court art of Asoka, and (2) the popular and perhaps more purely native art. The chief monu ments of the court art are the remains of the great palace at Patali putra (Patna), and the monolithic pillars on which Asoka's well known edicts are inscribed. The edict pillars, six in number, dis tributed over an area including Meerut, Allahabad, Benares, and the Nepal terai, have round polished monolithic shafts and are provided with elaborate capitals consisting of a lotus "bell," an abacus decorated with geese, palmettos or Buddhist symbols, and a crowning sculpture in the round consisting of one or more ani mals; they average from forty to fifty feet in height. The finest has been excavated at Sarnath, the old "Deer park" at Benares, where first "Turning of the Wheel of the Law" (the Buddha's first sermon) took place. Here there are four addorsed lions support ing a Wheel (the Dharmacakra, Wheel of the Law and of Do minion) ; the abacus is decorated with four smaller wheels, and a bull, lion, elephant and horse. Other pillars bear a single lion, a bull or an elephant. The naturalistic treatment of these ani mals, the technical accomplishment of the work and the fact that this is evidently a stylistically late art all distinguish these sculptures from the contemporary religious sculptures to be re ferred to below, and it has been argued that the court art of Asoka owes much to western sources, and even that it was produced by imported craftsmen : it is certain that close and friendly relations were maintained between the Maurya and Seleucid houses. The problem, however, is far from simple. All that is beyond doubt novel at this period is the use of stone to a limited extent for ar chitectural purposes, and probably the use of stone for large sculpture. Nor can the Maurya period, with its invaluable but very imperfect record be considered alone; early Indian art as a whole and the folk art up to the present day bear an intimate relation to Western Asiatic art. This relation is more obviously Babylonian-Assyrian than Persepolitan. Indian bell capitals, for example, are very different from those of Persia. Indian shafts are smooth or octagonal, and monolithic ; Persian fluted and seg mented. The use of animal standards as symbols of deities is at once Indian, Chaldaean and Assyrian, but not Achaemenid or Seleucid. The so-called Persepolitan capital with addorsed bulls (often horses, elephants or lions) again is so widely distributed and so much an integral part of the whole architectural style in the and century, that it could hardly have been introduced only a century earlier. So too with the civil architecture represented on the reliefs, showing walled cities with towers, and battlements like those of Assyria, with the mythical monsters, and with the elements of the decoration ; in all the relationship to Western Asia is conspicuous, but the individual character is equally unmistak able. Nor is it possible to suppose that no art of any kind existed in India before Asoka ; or that there existed some different sort of art just before Asoka, of which no trace can be found in the abundant reliefs just after him. Thus Maurya and unga art directly continue the traditions of pre-Maurya art; Indian and early Persian art are both late phases of a tradition common to all Western Asia.
The early Indian stone sculpture in the round of Maurya and unga date is represented by a number of colossal figures in royal costume, apparently statues of independent or attendant Yaksas and Yaksis, two of these having been found at Parkham, near Baroda (Plate II) and at Besnagar, one at Deoriya near Allahabad, one in Mathura, and three at Patna; all are in sand stone, and some are polished. The figures are distinguished by great mass and volume. There is no conscious effort for grace, but a statement of an ideal concept in a technique that is still primitive; for the form is frontally conceived, and the transi tions from one plane to another are somewhat abrupt. The style achieves its perfection some centuries later in a Buddha figure set up at Sarnath.
To the same school of art belong the reliefs of the early vihara (monastery) at Bhaja,—this is apparent in their volume, and in details of the costume, particularly the enormous turbans, and the pearl-fringed bracelets, which last are found also on some early terracottas. One of the most remarkable of these reliefs seems to represent Indra, seated on his cloud-elephant Airavata. Sacred trees (caitya-vrksas) guarded by railings and adorned with garlands and umbrellas, are to be seen, and on one side a horse headed Yaksi and a man, perhaps with reference to the Padaku salamanava Jataka. On the opposite side of the doorway, which divides what are evidently two parts of a single grandiose concep tion of earth and sky, is represented the Sun in a four-horsed chariot.
From this time onwards the history of Indian sculpture is richly documented. The great stupa of Bharhut (I75-15o n.c.), of which the extant remains are now all in Calcutta, had an elaborately decorated railing (vedika) and gateways (torana) . The rail coping bears a continuous floral meander, the flowers and leaves being partly vegetative, partly consisting of jewellery; in the interspaces of the meander are represented many of the Buddhist Jatakas, and other edifying legends. The railing medallions are developed as expanded lotus flowers, or occupied by Jataka subjects or scenes from the life of Buddha. On the upright pillars of the gateways and some of the railing pillars are found representations of various devatas, Yaksas and Yaksis, many of which are pro vided with inscriptions recording their names, as for example, Kubera; thus Buddhism made use of the popular divinities, as guardians and worshippers. The reliefs are all more or less compressed between the surface plane and that of the background, lacking equally the plastic volume of the Bhaja types and the technically more advanced relief of Sand; but the costumes, though modified, are closely related to those of Bhaja. The various decorative motifs, floral and geometrical, are indicative of a highly evolved art. Of the same date are some of the railing pillars of Stupa II. at Sand, and the remains of early sculptured walls (pdkdra) at Jagayyapeta and Amaravati.
Nearly contemporary with the Bharhut stupa, are the exca vated monasteries of Udayagiri and Khandagiri in Orissa. The best sculptures are reliefs forming a frieze in the upper storey of the Rani Gumpha; the subject, which includes the hunting of a winged deer as a part, has not been identified. The monas teries here are, so far as can be determined, all Jaina; but many of the motifs familiar to Buddhist art, e.g., the Lustration of ri-haksmi, and the Sun drawn in a four-horsed chariot, are found. Above the arches of the cell doors are found three headed serpents (Nagas), and below the frieze a series of small Garuda brackets, both features that are later on extensively developed in Khmer art.
Prior to the 8unga period the major Indian deities seem to have been represented mainly or exclusively by symbols. As Asoka speaks of engraving edicts on already existing columns it is pos sible that the Mauryan bull and elephant capitals were originally erected in honour of diva and Indra. Garuda and makara stand ards of 8unga date at Besnagar refer to Visnu and Kamadeva, the fan palm capitals perhaps to Baladeva. Siva is represented on early coins by a bull, or a mountain of three peaks surmounted by a crescent ; later, in the Kusana period he appears in person to gether with the bull and other symbols; Indra and Agni appear on the coins of the Pancalas in the 2nd century B.C. ; the abhi sekha of Sri on those of Azilises in the first (as well as on the earlier Bharhut reliefs and on terracottas), other forms of Sri on coins of Amoghabhuti. Indra and Brahma are freely represented in Buddhist art at Bharhut and Sand wherever the narrative requires ; the former with his vajra (thunderbolt) , and a vessel containing the "Water of Life," usually, too, with a cylindrical metal headdress (q.v.), the first appearance of any kind of crown in Indian art (the original royal headdress is a turban).
Patanjali, commenting on Panini, c. 200 B.C., refers to the pub lic exhibition of images or Siva, Skanda and Visakha; and there is evidence enough in the later Brahmanas, Law Books, Epics, and Buddhist and Jaina literature to show that the use of images and temples (qq.v.) had come into general prominence from about 400 B.C. onwards. Probably the oldest surviving anthropomorphic representation of a deity, forming a cult image, is that of Siva on the lingam, from Gudimallam in Eastern India a little above Madras ; here the deity stands on a dwarf Yaksa vehicle, and in this respect and stylistically, though more devel oped, recalls the Kubera of Bharhut. This early figure of Siva is a great and powerful work, fortunately preserved from a period when a majority of Hindu images were still made of wood or clay. There is an interesting, though later, reference to such images in the Divydvaddna, where Upagupta, worshipping an appearance of the Buddha created by Mara explains that he is bowing, not to the object before him, but to the Master himself, "just as people venerating images of Gods do not revere the clay, but the im mortal ones represented by them." The most perfectly preserved Buddhist monument in India is the great stupa at Sand in Bhopal State. Enclosed and hidden within it is an earlier brick stupa dating from the time of Asoka, but the stupa itself as enlarged and cased with masonry dates from the second century B.C., the plain railing from the same time, and the gateways from the first half of the first century B.C. Two other stupas with their railings in whole or part are to be dated in the second century B.C.
The reliefs of the great gateways (toranas) of the main stupa, occurring on the upright pillars and on the horizontal architraves illustrate Buddhist legends, including Jatakas and scenes from the Buddha's ultimate incarnation. They are executed with a delicacy and wealth of detail suggestive of ivory carvings, and indeed a votive inscription records that some were carried out "by the ivory workers of Bhilsa." Apart from their original intention they afford a veritable encyclopedia of manners, weapons, decoration and symbolism. At the base of the upright pillars are very beauti ful figures of guardian Yaksas ; and the architrave brackets are Yaksis represented as dryads clinging to their trees and leaning outwards. Several of the smaller panels illustrate the Lustration of sri, an old and popular goddess of fortune, standing or seated on a lotus, which rises from a jar of plenty (punna-ghata), and laved by two cloud-elephants holding in their trunks inverted jars from which proceed streams of water; other panels in corre sponding positions represent the jar of plenty with its lotuses, but without a figure, are probably symbols of the same divinity. On the tops of the uppermost architraves are Buddhist symbols guarded by cauri-bearing Yaksas.
Just as at Bharhut, and in early Indian art generally, in the scenes from the Buddha's life, though they tell their story with perfect clarity, the Buddha himself is never represented in human form, but only by symbols, footprints (pdduka) , and umbrella (chatra), or wheel (cakra), or tree. These symbols indicate the presence of the Buddha wherever required in the representation, and some refer to specific episodes in the life, including most of those which are afterwards grouped together in panels illustrating the Four (or Eight) Great Events. Thus, the Wheel designates the First Preaching of the Law; the sacred tree (Bodhi-druma) with its altar or railing, the Great Enlightenment. Where the tree is represented with guardian Yaksas on either hand, we recognize the prototype of the later Buddha triads, where the Buddha is seated between a pair of attendant Bodhisattvas; for there is no doubt that the principal Bodhisattvas, especially Padmapani (Avalokiteivara) and Vajrapani were originally guardian Yaksas.
Further, the art of Sand, though Buddhist in theme, is scarcely Buddhistic in content; the legends illustrated are always edifying, but the manner of treating them and the feeling for the human form are far from ascetic or introspective. And this becomes especially evident in connection with the accessory figures, such as the dryads, filled as they are with the abundance and joy of life.
A very important school flourished at Mathura from the second century B.C. to the sixth A.D. The early fragments are in a man ner closely related to that of Bharhut. More important are those which cover the period of transition from the old aniconic to the later anthropomorphic representation of the Buddha figure : these are of Kusana, and perhaps somewhat earlier (Indo-Parthian or Ksatrapa) date and will be discussed below.