The earliest structural Hindu shrines existing are the flat-roofed Gupta temples, square in plan with a veranda supported by four pillars, the doorway being elaborately carved. At Ajanta the cell in the centre of the back wall of the oblong, many pillared caves, is cut on exactly the same plan, the doorways corresponding very closely. The introduction of the linga shrine at Badami and Ellora eventually altered the plan radically by placing the shrine in the body of the hall as at Elephanta. The great medieval temples consist of high-towered shrines, each with its entrance pavilions.
Avalokitesvara seated between two tara and two donor figures, late 10th century or early 11th century C. E. Bronze alloy inlaid with silver and copper, height: 34.5 cm. Private collection, Kashmir.
As portrayed in the Brahmajala Sutta, primitive Buddhism gave no place to aesthetics; music, song, and dance were classed with sorcery and iconography, unprofitable to the wise. Manu and Chanakya also adopted this slighting attitude towards the arts. However, that is of little account, and Bharhut and Sanchi are not less fine because they are not supported by the argumentative analysis of the schoolmen. The art of the Early Period is a spontaneous growth, endued with native virility. Essentially narrative, it is vividly perceptive. The history of Indian art must be written in terms of the action of a literary, metaphysical mode of thought upon this naive, story-telling art, resulting in the formation of an immense and intricate iconography. Around this iconography has grown a still more abstruse, secondary literature, in which the least variation of detail is seized upon to sanction the subdivision and endless multiplication of types of icons.
Images are roughly divided into two classes, the fixed and the movable (achala and chala). They are likewise roughly described as standing (sthanaka), sitting (asana) or reclining (sayana). Also they may further be described in terms of the nature of the manifestation: as terrible (ugra) as is Vishnu in his man-lion incarnation, or pacific (santa). The images of Vishnu are further classified according to their natures as Yoga, Bhoga, and Vira, to be worshipped respectively according to the personal desires of the worshipper.
This classification of gods and devotees according to their innate natures refers directly to the classification by natures of the Sankhya philosophy, primeval matter being distinguished by the three properties (gunas) of light (sattva), mutation (rajas), and darkness (tamas). It is clear that the needs of the worshipper specify the type of the image worshipped. Complex manifestations, whose many attributes are symbolized by their many hands are considered Tamasic in character, and their worshippers of little understanding. To the wise, images of all kinds are equally superfluous.
Indian aesthetics must be regarded as being of late date, a supplement to aesthetics, the iconographical literature of the medieval period. Much of the Agamas is of great iconographical interest, but these late literary canons have no aesthetic light to shed, although they do indicate something of the religious, hieratical atmosphere which deadened artistic creation in the last period of medieval decadence. Indian aesthetics are based upon the conception of aesthetic value in terms of personal response or reproduction. This value is known as rasa, and when it is present the object is said to have rasa and the person to be rasika or appreciative. Rasa produces various moods in the rasika varying in kind according to the initial stimulus; from these moods emotions spring. The mechanics of this system is worked out in detail in the Dhanamjaya Dasarupa and the Visvanatha Sahitya Darpana. The whole system is based upon and illustrated by literature, and cannot be applied directly to sculpture and painting.
Mayadevi Birthing the Historical Buddha, 9th-10th century C. E., Pala dynasty, Bihar. Stele and biotite schist, 58.4 × 35.6 × 13.3 cm. Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.
The Mauryan Period
Lion capital of the pillar erected by King Ashoka at Sarnath (today the National Emblem of India), c. 250 B. C. E., Maurya dynasty (Ashoka). Polished Chunar sandstone, height: 215 cm. Archaeological Museum, Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh.
A short time after the death of Alexander in 323 B. C. E., the throne of Magadha or Bihar, then the premier kingdom of Northern India, was seized by Chandragupta, surnamed the Maurya, known as Sandrokottos to Greek authors. In the course of a victorious reign of twenty-four years this able prince caused his influence to be felt over all India, at least as far south as the river Narmada, and acquired from Seleukos Nikator, first his enemy and then his ally, the valuable provinces lying between the Indus and the Hindu Kush mountains which now constitute the major part of the kingdom of Afghanistan.
Chandragupta was succeeded by his son Bindusara, who, in or about 273 B. C. E., transmitted the imperial sceptre to his son, Ashoka, the third and most renowned sovereign of the Maurya dynasty. For forty-one years (273–232 B. C. E.) Ashoka ruled his immense empire with great power and might, maintaining friendly relations with his neighbours, the Tamil states of the extreme south and also with the island kingdom of Sri Lanka and the more remote Greek monarchies of Macedonia, Epirus, Western Asia, Egypt, and Cyrene.
Early in life the emperor became a religious convert and as the years rolled Ashoka’s on his zeal increased. Finally, his energies and riches were devoted almost patronage of entirely to the work of honouring and propagating the teaching of Gautama Buddhism – Buddha. With one exception he abstained from wars of conquest and was thus free to concentrate his attention upon the task to which his life was consecrated.
The imperial palace at Pataliputra, the modern Patna, the capital of Early Chandragupta Maurya is described by Greek and Roman authors as excelling the royal residences of Susa and Ekbatana in splendour. Although no vestige architecture of such a building has survived (with the possible exception of some brick foundations) there is no reason to doubt the statements of the historians. The result of much excavation seems to support the literary evidence that Indian architects before the time of Ashoka built their superstructures chiefly of timber, using sun-dried brick almost exclusively for foundations and plinths. No deficiency in dignity or grandeur was involved in the use of the more perishable material; on the contrary, the employment of timber enables wide spaces to be roofed with ease which could not be spanned with masonry, especially when, as in India, the radiating arch was not ordinarily employed for structural purposes.
Excavations of widely spread sites dating from the Maurya to the Gupta Stone periods, and even later, emphasize the fact that timber and unburnt brick buildings were the standard architectural materials of ancient India, mud being used as it still is, for ordinary, domestic work. However, Ashoka is credited by the literary sources with the use of masonry in the many building activities reported of him. It is on record that during his reign of about forty-one years he replaced the wooden walls and buildings of his capital by more substantial work and caused hundreds of fine edifices in both brick and stone to be erected throughout the empire. So astonishing was his activity as a builder that people in after ages could not believe his constructions to be the work of human agency, and felt constrained to regard them as wrought by familiar spirits forced to obey the behests of the imperial magician. Few sites can, however, be definitely ascribed to the Ashokan or even to the Mauryan period. No building with any pretensions to be considered an example of architecture can be assigned to any earlier period than this, with which the history of Indian architecture as of the other arts begins.
The Mauryan emperors must surely have built palaces, public offices, and Indian temples suitable to the dignity of a powerful empire and proportionate to the wealth of rich provinces, but of such structures not a trace seems to survive. The best explanation of this fact is the hypothesis that the early works of Indian architecture and art were mainly constructed of timber and other perishable materials, ill-fitted to withstand the ravenous tooth of time. Whatever the true explanation of this may be the fact remains that the history of Indian art begins with Ashoka. ‘But’, as Professor Percy Gardner observes, ‘there can be no doubt