Earliest Indian art traditions from the Indus Valley through the Mauryan empire, the foundation for all later art history
Indus Valley Town Planning
The Basics
Around 2600 BCE, the Indus river plains saw India's first urban civilisation emerge from an earlier Bronze Age culture. It is called Harappan after Harappa, in present-day Punjab, Pakistan, where it was first identified in 1921. A seal from Harappa had actually been noticed earlier, in 1853, by the engineer Alexander Cunningham. He did not realise its significance at the time. The Indian archaeologist Daya Ram Sahni began excavating Harappa in 1921. Soon after, the historian R.D. Banerjee excavated Mohenjodaro, in Sindh. Later excavations were led by John Marshall, Ernest Mackay, Madho Sarup Vats and, after 1946, Mortimer Wheeler.
Harappan cities have given archaeologists thousands of small seals, mostly carved from steatite, a soft stone. A standard seal was a square plaque of about two inches by two inches. Round, rectangular, triangular and cylindrical seals also appear, and some were made of agate, chert, copper, faience, terracotta, ivory or even gold and silver. Each seal usually carried an animal figure on one side and a short inscription in a pictographic script on the other, carved in intaglio, meaning the design was cut into the surface so that it stood out in relief when pressed into clay.
The Harappan cities of Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Lothal and Kalibangan were not only well planned but also home to skilled metalworkers. Alongside the stone sculptures of the Priest-King bust at Mohenjodaro and the Male Torso at Harappa, Harappan artisans turned to bronze to create a different, more lifelike kind of image, one that captured movement rather than stillness.
Harappan artisans also shaped simple baked clay, called terracotta, besides stone and bronze. These terracotta figures are crude and mostly hand-modelled, using a pinching method. They are found in the largest numbers in Gujarat sites and at Kalibangan, where the modelling is somewhat more careful.
By the mature Harappan phase, cities were planned and also busy with craft production. Raw materials like carnelian, agate, jasper, steatite, lapis lazuli, shell, ivory, gold and copper arrived from distant regions. Skilled artisans turned these into beads, bangles and ornaments on a large scale.
After the Harappan decline, north India entered a long rural phase. Village communities in the upper Gangetic doab used a new pottery called Painted Grey Ware, roughly from 1200 to 600 BCE. This period is also called the Later Vedic age. The pottery was grey, often painted with simple black geometric designs, and plainer than earlier Harappan black-on-red ware. Painted Grey Ware sites show early iron tools, cattle rearing and small settlements, but no real towns yet.
By the 3rd century BCE, the Maurya empire had grown larger than the preceding Nanda empire. It stretched across almost the whole subcontinent, built on the base of Northern Black Polished Ware towns. This scale of power needed a new kind of expression, and the Maurya kings, above all Ashoka, found it in stone.
Ashoka raised a pillar at Sarnath, near Varanasi, to mark the spot where the Buddha gave his first sermon, an event called the Dhammachakrapravartana. The capital placed on top of this pillar became the most admired work of Mauryan sculpture and is known simply as the Lion Capital of Sarnath.
Ashoka's artisans had already mastered cutting and polishing hard stone to a mirror finish for his pillars and the Sarnath lion capital. They now turned this skill towards the hills. Ashoka ordered India's first rock-cut caves to be hollowed out of solid rock for ascetics to live in.
By the time Ashoka's pillars and the Barabar caves were finished, the Mauryan empire stretched from Afghanistan to Karnataka. One ruler held it together, though it spoke many languages and scripts. No Indian king before Ashoka had left royal orders carved in stone for his people to read. One possible exception is a pre-Ashokan copper-plate record from Sohgaura in Gorakhpur district, Uttar Pradesh. Ashoka changed this practice.
By the time Ashoka's edicts were being carved on pillars and rocks, Mauryan cities across the Gangetic plains were full of ordinary clay objects that tell a different, everyday story of the same empire.