The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

60 THE EARLY CLASSIC PERIODS
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yaksha genii, he raised eighty-four thousand
stupas to the Buddha in a single night. History,
rather than myth, is the record of Asoka's
missionary activities, such as the sending of
Buddhist envoys to the kings of the Hellenistic
world and to the green darkness of the Singhalese
jungles.
Part of the Maurya heritage from ancient
Mesopotamia and Achaemenid Iran was the
ideal of world conquest and universal sovereignty.
Asoka in his regnal policy was seeking
to embody in himself the ancient Babylonian
and also Vedic concept of the Lord of the Four
Quarters, designated in early Indian texts as
Cakravartin, whom the celestial wheel (the
sun) guides to dominion over all regions. Although
in a practical sense the dominions of the
Maurya Cakravartin extended from Afghanistan
to Mysore, an actual world conquest was to
be achieved, not by force, but peacefully by the
spread of the Dharma. 1 This background to
Maurya power, together with Asoka's substitution
of a kind of religious imperialism for his
grandfather Chandragupta's rule by force, is
important in considering the art of his period.
An examination of the ruins of the fabulous
city of Pataliputra, near modern Patna, is
extremely important for an understanding of
the whole character of Maurya civilization
which Asoka inherited and perpetuated. Following
not only Indian but ancient Near Eastern
precedent, the palace walls, the splendid towers
and pavilions, were all constructed of brick or
baked clay that has long since crumbled to dust
or been swept away by periodic inundations of
the swollen waters of the Ganges. Megasthenes
tells of five hundred and sixty towers and sixtyfour
gateways in the circuit of the city walls.
Describing the wonders of Pataliputra, Aelian,
who borrows from Megasthenes' account, tells
us: 'In the Indian royal palace . . . there
are
wonders with which neither Memnonian Susa
in all its glory nor Ecbatana with all its magnificence
can hope to vie. In the parks tame
peacocks are kept, and pheasants which have
been domesticated ; and cultivated plants . . . and
shady groves and pastures planted with trees,
and tree-branches which the art of the woodman
has deftly interwoven. There are also tanks of
great beauty in which they keep fish of enormous
size but quite tame.' 2
Such a description might accurately portray
a Persian royal garden or paradise in the days of
Xerxes and Darius. Beyond the evidence of the
actual excavations at Pataliputra we can get an
idea of the appearance of the city in the elevations
of towns that form the backgrounds for
Buddhist subjects in the reliefs of the Early
Andhra Period at Safichi. The panel on the
eastern gateway representing the Buddha's
return to Kapilavastu [15] and a similar panel of
King Prasenajit on the northern portal show us
a city surrounded by massive walls, topped by
battlements and picturesque balconies enclosed
by railings and surmounted by barrel-vaulted
structures terminating in chaitya windows.
Details in other reliefs enable us to visualize the
presence of a moat surrounded by a palisade or
railing of the type developed in the Vedic
Period. It is to be assumed that all these superstructures
were built of wood. In the relief
representing the Buddha's departure from
Kapilavastu we see that the actual portal in the
city walls is preceded by a frontispiece in the
shape of a simple torana of the very same type
that is constructed in stone at Sanchi. The
excavations of Pataliputra revealed that at one
time it was completely surrounded by a massive
palisade of teak beams held together by iron
dowels. This was, of course, an adaptation of
the railings of the Vedic Period to the uses of
urban fortification. The Chinese Buddhist
pilgrim, Fa Hsien, visiting Pataliputra shortly
after a.d. 400, mentions 'the royal palace, the
different parts of which he [Asoka] commissioned
the genii to construct by piling up the
stones. The walls, doorways, and the sculptured
designs are no human work.' 3