Here is your short essay on Mauryan Art

The first organised art activity in India in large scale and durable material, of which datable ex­amples have come down to us in a large number, belong to the Mauryan period. We have no ex­amples extant of either sculpture or architecture that can definitely be labelled chronologically as pre-Mauryan or perhaps as pre-Asoka.

The description of the city of Pataliputra and of the royal palace we read in the accounts of classical writers like Megasthenes, Arrian, and Strabo, and the excavations at the site of the old city which is discussed at a later stage, may be taken to suggest that Chandragupta, the first Mauryan ruler may have been responsible for the original planning and execution of the buildings of the city as well as of the royal palace; but there can be little doubt that Bindusara and Asoka, added considerably to the original layout and the buildings.

A few characteristic features of the Mauryan sculptural and architectural remains are:

(i) They are all monumental in conception and design, inordinately fine and precise in ex­ecution.

(ii) All the Mauryan sculptures, including the monolithic pillars, were executed in hard sand stone mostly quarried at Chunar near Varanasi (U.P.). They were always very fine­ly chiselled and very highly polished to glossiness “that has hardly any parallel in India and in the world except in ancient Iran”.

(iii) The Mauryan art was basically a royal or court art. The huge resources of the State made available to the artists rendered pos­sible the conception, planning and execu­tion in such large and gigantic proportions.

Anand Coomarswamy has made a distinc­tion between court art and a more popular art during the Mauryan period. Court art is represented by the pillars and their capitals and popular art by superb individual icons such as Yakshi of Besanagar, the Yaksha of Parkham and Chauri-bearer from Didar- ganj.

(iv) It is difficult to say whether the evolution of the Mauryan art was the outcome of natural historical process or directly or indirectly conditioned by India’s contact with the con- temporary west-Asiatic world. Many scholars have suggested that the Mauryan art, particularly the pillars and animal figures, were greatly influenced by the art of the Achaemenid dynasty of Iran.

Wheeler has suggested that the Mauryan craftsmen employed by the State may have been Per­sians (Iranians) who had settled in India. A few other historians have pointed out the Hellenic (Greek) influence on the Mauryan art. Though clearly inspired by foreign models, the Mauryan art is clearly distin­guishable from them and in some respects superior to them.

The sum total of the Mauryan treasure of art may be said to include:

(i) The remains of the royal palace and city of Pataliputra;

(ii) The rock-cut Chaitya-halls or cave dwellings in the Barabar and Nagarjuni Hills of Gaya (Bihar);

(iii) The Edict-bearing and the non-Edict bear­ing Asokan pillars;

(iv) The animal sculptures crowning the pillars with animal and vegetal reliefs decorating the abaci of the capitals; (v) other individual Mauryan sculptures and the terracotta figures discovered from various sites.

The Mauryan Royal Palace and City of Pataliputra:

The famous metropolis of Pataliputra, known to the Greek and Latin writers as Palibothra, Palibotra and Palimbothra, situated at the con flucncc of Sone and the Ganges, stretched in the form of a parallelogram. It was enclosed by a wooden wall pierced with loopholes for the dis­charge of arrows and crowned with 570 towers, apparently for keeping watch.

The approaches to the city consisted of 64 gates. Sumptuous palaces adorned the city, which housed a large population including many foreigners. If Arrian is to be believed the royal palace, “where the greatest of all the kings” of India resided, was a marvel of workmanship with which “neither Memnomian Susa with all its costly splendour, nor Ekbatana with all its magnificence, can vie”.

The Mauryan wooden palace survived till at least the end of the 4th century A.D. when Fahien visited India and found it so astounding that he considered it “a work of spirits”. The palace seems to have been destroyed by fire as maybe inferred from the ashes and burnt fragments of wooden pillars found at Kumrahar near Patana.

Rock-cut Architecture:

Seven rock-cut sanctuaries in the hills about 31 km to the north of Gaya, four on the Barabar Hills, and three on the Nagarjuni Hills belong to the time of Asoka and his grandson Dasaratha. These are the earliest known examples of the rock-cut architecture. A few of these cave-dwellings were dedicated by Asoka and his grandson Dasaratha for the use of the monks of the Ajivika sect.

Three caves bearin Asoka’s Inscriptions belong to Barabar group, which are named as: the Kama Chaupar Cave, the Sudama Cave and the Lomasa Risi Cave. Of all the caves, the largest is known as the Gopika Cave, with its both ends semicircular. All these caves are marked by the Mauryan architectural charac­teristic of a bright polish shining from their wal as well as roofs.