opportunities for the display of art in every form. Although no very early monastery has survived in a condition at all complete, the ground-plans of many such establishments have been clearly traced, and in Gandhara considerable remains of superstructures crowded with statuary have been disclosed. Recorded descriptions and extant remains amply attest the splendour of the more important monasteries, each of which was a centre of secular as well as of religious education, and also a school of art in which men were trained in all the crafts needed for the adornment of the holy places.
Dhamekh Stupa. This stupa is said to mark the spot where Buddha gave his first sermons to his five disciples after attaining enlightenment. The narrative sculptures show different events from Buddha’s life, 249 B. C. E./50 °C. E., Maurya dynasty (Ashoka)/late Gupta period.
Solid cylinder of bricks and stone, stupa: diameter: 28 m, height 43.6 m. Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh.
The Jetavanaramaya stupa, located in the ruins of Jetavana Monastery, 3rd-4th century C. E., Anuradhapura period. One of the largest brick structures in the world (93.3 million baked bricks), height: 122 m, volume: 233,000 m3. Anuradhapura.
Symbols of the Buddha’s first sermon, with centred triple wheel, aniconic representation of the historic Buddha, 2nd century B. C. E., Kushan period, Ancient Gandhara (modern Pakistan/Afghanistan). Grey schist, 23.2 × 19.7 × 4.4 cm. Private collection.
Something of this great school of art is preserved for us in the great rock-cut halls and dwelling-caves of Western India. Here, at Bhaja, Kondane, Pitalkhora, Bedsa, Ajanta, Nasik, Karli, and Kanheri, have been hewn out of the very heart of the rock full-scale reproductions of the ancient assembly-halls in all the detail of their wooden construction. In general plan they correspond with the barrel-roofed buildings of the early sculpture. They are apsidal with side aisles on either hand and are lit by the great horseshoe window at one end. A survey of this series of caves lays bare a stylistic advance from purely wooden imitation to definitely lithic forms. At Bhaja the plain octagonal pillars rake inwards considerably; the screen that closed the lower part of the great window was actually of timber mortised into the rock as are the carefully inset roof beams. There is no decoration except bands of railing-pattern and tiers of miniature ‘chatty a windows’, derived from the piled-up stories of the wooden originals. These details apply to the caves at Kondane, Pitalkhora and to the earliest at Ajanta (Cave X). Later the wooden screen is reproduced in stone and bell-capitals and bases, and tiered-up abaci with heavy animal upper-capitals appear, while at Nasik, Karli, and Kanheri sculpture is freely used. This sculpture is all obviously post-Sanchi. At Karli and Kanheri highly decorated railings of the Amaravati kind are found and also guardian figures which closely correspond to the middle phase of Kushan sculpture, found at Mathura. The epigraphical evidence coincides with the artistic evidence, dating the last of these early caves (Karli and Kanheri) in the second century C. E. The façade of Bhaja is so exactly like the bas-relief representations of the wooden original at Bharhut and Bodh Gaya that the earliest of the series may be accepted as second century B. C. E.
The Lomas Rishi Cave in the Barabar hills belongs to a group of small rock-cut cells some of which were dedicated in the reigns of Ashoka and Dasaratha, his grandson. Like the other caves its interior walls have received the fine polish which is so typical of Mauryan work. The original work seems to have been discontinued owing to a flaw in the rock. The façade must have been a later addition, for it is akin to the work at Bharhut. It, however, offers a good example of the close imitation of wooden construction.
The Buddha’s first sermon, 2nd century B. C. E., Satavahana dynasty. Steatite, height: 39.5 cm. Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh.
Sculpture
The art of the times dealt with in this chapter is characterized by frank naturalism. It is thoroughly human, a mirror of the social and religious life of ancient India, apparently a much pleasanter and merrier life than that of the India of later ages, when the Brahmans had reasserted their superiority and imposed their ideas upon art and upon every branch of Hindu civilization. The early sculptures, while full of the creatures of gay fancy, are free from the gloom and horror of the conceptions of the medieval artists. The Buddhism with which nearly all of them are concerned was, as already observed, the popular creed of men and women living a natural life in the world, seeking happiness, and able to enjoy themselves.
There has, also, been a tendency to apply certain literary standards, which are in essence medieval, to the work of the Early Period, and in fact, to all Indian art, wholesale. The various members, mouldings, and motives which dealt with in the Silpa Sastras cannot be found outside the buildings of the medieval period. With regard to the passages dealing with the sculpture the same thing applies. The Sastras are in fact technical memoranda based on a literary tradition, which may be taken to have crystalised out from the great literary activity of the Gupta period. Their import is very great with regard to the iconography of medieval and modern India. They can only be applied with great circumspection to the earlier art, the inspiration of which is oral and living.
The footprints of the Buddha (Buddhapada) from the Great Stupa at Amaravati, 1st century B. C. E., Satavahana period, Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh. Limestone panel, 67.5 × 46.25 × 15 cm. British Museum, London.
Mahayan Chaitya-Griha Cave Temple, 5th-6th century C. E., late Gupta period. Rock-cut hall. Ajanta caves (Cave XXVI), near Aurangabad, Maharashtra.
The study of the existing monuments of Ashoka, scanty as they are, leaves one with a clear impression of a definite and distinct school of sculpture, with great stylistic and architectonic qualities and certain characteristics which distinguish it from the sculpture of the Early Period and from all other periods of Indian art. Firstly, finely stylized as these works are they are essentially naturalistic. Secondly, columns, capitals, and caves all have a highly finished, polished surface which is unique and unmistakable. Certain sculptures, however, exist which possess this distinguishing finish and yet as sculptures are to be classed with the work of Bharhut and Sanchi. These may be treated as a link between the two schools. Anyhow the Mauryan period, which is historically exact, provides a lower limit for the dating of the work of the Early Period. Among these sculptures, which are mostly of colossal size, is a mutilated standing statue of a male, perhaps representing the Yaksha demigod Kuvera, god of wealth, found at Parkham in the Mathura District, and now in the Mathura Museum. The material is polished grey sandstone similar to that used for the Ashoka pillars. The height, including pedestal, is two and a half metres, and the breadth across the shoulders is 79 centimetres. The excessively massive body, which possesses considerable grandeur, is clothed in a waistcloth (dhoti) held around the loins by means of a flat girdle tied in a knot in front. A second flat girdle is bound round the chest. The ornaments are a necklace and a torque from which four tassels hang down on the back. Some praise may be given to the treatment of the drapery.
This is probably the earliest example of ‘early’ sculpture as distinct from the Mauryan. In treatment and detail it is clearly a forerunner of the sculpture of Bharhut and has nothing in common with the art of the Mauryan capitals. Several other colossal sculptures, which do not possess the distinctive Mauryan polish, emphasize this development.
An uninscribed statue of a female, two metres in height, found near Besnagar adjoining Bhilsa in the Gwalior State, Central India, a locality associated by tradition with Ashoka, is to be classed among these on account of the style and costume.
The figure wears the heavy headdress as found at Bharhut and Sanchi and also the linked belt of beaded strands and the double breast chain. The finely pleated waistcloth is held at the hips by a belt with
