Sculpture
This period marked an imaginative and impressive step forward in Indian sculpting. Although some would consider the Pillars of Ashoka as architecture, owing to their free standing nature and elaborately carved animal capitals most of the art historians consider them as the examples of sculpture. Coomaraswamy distinguishes between court art and a more popular art during the Mauryan period. Court art is represented by the pillars and their capitals. Popular art is represented by the works of the local sculptors like chauri (whisk)-bearer from Didarganj.
Read more about this topic: Mauryan Art
Famous quotes containing the word sculpture:
“Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)