The best specimens of the Mauryan art are provided by a number ofmonolithic columns or pillars with an excellent craftsmanship, shining polish and majestic animal capitals.
The pillars are made of two types of stone. Some are of the spotted red and white sand stone from the region of Mathuia and others of buff-coloured fine grained hard grey sand stone quarried at Chunar near Varanasi.
They generally consist of a round and a monolithic shaft tapering from the base with a diameter ranging from about 90 cm to 125 cm to a total height of between 12 and 15 meters. Havell describes the capital of these pillars as “Persian bell-shaped capital”.
But this identification is misleading because the capital represents a flower, lotus, not a bell. The capital is surmounted by an abacus on which birds, animals, dharma chakra, etc. have been carved out. The crowning glory of these pillars is animal figures at the top of the pillars. The animals represented on the top of these pillars are:
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(i) At Lauriyanandangarh the crowning figure is a single lion, while the abacus is adorned by a row of Brahmagiri geese or hamsas pecking their food. A single lion also adorns the top of the Asokan pillars at Koluha (Bakhra) and Rampurwa.
(ii) There are four lions set back to back on the top of the pillars at Sanchi and Sarnath.
(iii) At Sankisa (Farrukhabad Distt., U.P.) there is an elephant as the capital.
(iv) At Rampurwa a bull has been represented.
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(v) The capital of the Lauriya-Araraj pillar had a Garuda according to V.A.Smith but many other historians believe it to be a single lion.
The Chinese travellers Fa-hien and Huen- tsang noticed lion-capitals at Sankisa and Kapil- vastu; at Pataliputra wheel capital; Ox-capital at Sravasti; horse-capital at Lumbini; and an elephant-capital at Rajagraha.
The Sarnath Pillar raised in the deer park, where the Buddha preached his first sermon, is the finest Mauryan pillar. Its capital is surmounted by four lions standing back to back and in their middle was represented a large stone wheel, the symbol of the Dharma-Chakra, of which only fragments are left.
The lions are sitting on a drum showing figures of four animals carved on it viz. a lion, an elephant, a bull and a horse, placed between four wheels. The animal figures according to Sir John Marshall are the “masterpieces in point of both style and technique-the finest carving, indeed that India has yet produced, and unsurpassed by anything of their kind in the ancient world”.