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Art and Architecture
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Mathurā and Masaon are stamped with Chakra and leaf. Similar symbols along with circlets have also been noticed on the elephant figurines at Hastināpura. Painted terra-cottas have been discovered at Noh and Buxar (Charitravan). CERAMICS
That this period witnessed a great boom in the ceramic activities is clear both from literary and archaeological evidences. From the Uvāsagadasão?, it is learnt that Saddālaputta, a Śrāvaka of Mahāvīra, owned, outside the town of Polasapura, five hundred pottery shops where people prepared a large number of bowls, pots, and pitchers and jars of different sizes. At Rajagriha, there was a Magadhan potter, Bhagava, in whose workshop the Buddha spent a night.2 Mankhali Gośāla also had his headquarters at Săvatthi in the workshop of the potter woman, Hālāhalā.3 The archaeological excavations conducted at different sites give us an idea of the ceramics used by the people. This period was noteworthy for the introduction of some new fabrics, the most important of which was the North Black Polished Ware. Black slipped Ware, Red and Black Ware, Grey Ware and Red Ware were the associate potteries of this age which met the increasing demand of the people.
Smoothness and lustre are the characteristics of the North Black Polished Ware. We may describe it as the prince of Indian potteries. As it was a costly ware and used by aristocrats, it was praised as a ware de luxc. It is made of well levigated clay and fired under very high temperature. It is of various shades and colours, such as golden, silvery, pinkish, gold-blue, brown-black, and steel-blue. The chief carthenware vessels produced by this pottery include dishcs with incurved sides, bowls with straight convex, corrugated or tapering sides, lids, and rimless carinated handiwork.
This Northern Black Polished Ilare seems to have originated in Magadha in the seventh century B.C., and became very popular in the Gangetic valley in the sixth century B.C. 1. Uvī, p. 119. 2. ABORI 1926-27, p. 165. 3. Bhag, xv.
