Introduction
Recent archaeological discoveries and historical researches have pushed the history of India back to at least three thousand years before the birth of Christ. But the first organised art activity in India in bigger scale and durable material that we have any definite knowledge of even to this day and of which datable examples have come down to us in any recognisable number belong to the period of the Mauryas. The chalcolithic age to which belongs the civilisation of the Indus valley has bequeathed to us relics, few in number but varied in subject and treatment, that may safely be said to belong to the domain of high art with a long artistic tradition and experience behind it. Indeed, the art represented by the reliefs on the seals and figure sculptures in the round found at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and other sites in the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and further north and east is already highly developed, sophisticated and conscious, and expresses most frankly and significantly the culture-ideology of a people urban in upbringing, highly sophisticated in the luxury of living, and probably industrial and feudal in socio-economic organisation. Like the civilisation itself its art also had already reached the creative climax of a tradition. Into the relation of this art with the art of the contemporary civilised world it is not the place to enter; but it must needs be told that this art inspite of its affinities with contemporary Mediterranean art has its own essential qualities and its own character of form that link it with the art of India of the historical period. Yet the fact remains that the art of the Indus valley still largely an unknown factor in so far as it remains chronologically unrelated and unexplained and nothing definite is known of what happened along the arrow of time between the final phase of the Indus valley civilisation and the civilisation that flourished in the Ganges valley more than two thousand years later.
The earliest that the Ganges valley is alleged to have offered to us in the shape and form of what may be called an art object is a small gold tablet representing a naked woman standing on her legs in symmetrical rigidity, with exaggerated hips and sexual organs, heavy and clumsy ornaments and in a rigidly angular composition. Dug out of a tomb near Lauriya, it was identified by Bloch, the explorer, as the iconic representation of the Earth goddess and was ascribed by him. to about the 8th or 7th century B.C. There can hardly be any doubt that such images in metal, and perhaps also in clay, served as fetishistic symbols. There are passages in the Rgveda and later also in the Grhyasūtras which can be interpreted to suggest that figures of gods and animals were fashioned in metal and clay for such purposes. A small gold tablet similar to that found at Lauriya and a small gold figure, forming part of the relics from the ruins of the Piprahwa Stūpa evidently Buddhistic, and belonging to a period not earlier than that of the Mauryas, reveal the same motive and treatment as those of the Lauriya tablet, so that the latter can hardly be ascribed to so early a period as has been done.
About The Book
Maurya art flourished under the Maurya Dynasty from 323-185 BC. There were two categories of Maurya art court or royal art, and folk or popular art. Examples of court art include the Royal Palace at Pataliputra, the Great Stupa, and the famous Pillar of Ashoka. Rock cut caves at sites like Barabar Hills also exhibited Maurya art. Folk art included pottery, sculptures like the Yaksi Didarganj, and terracotta figurines. Sunga period art following the Mauryas can be seen at locations like Sanchi and Amaravati.
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