98 research outputs found
Chandragupta Maurya Aur Usaka Kaal -A Book Review"
No full textThe book provides a description of the history of the Maurya period and an analysis of the story of the Mauryas. The language of the book is mainly analytical and factual and essayistic. The author of Indian history ke prachani kal ko chuna hai. In which he works to write history about Maurya dynasty. By the way, the history of the Maurya dynasty has been quite long
On Yaksa and Yakusi Statues in the Maurya Period
Get PDFStudies on Indian art history entail all kinds of difficulties owing to the obscurity of historical facts; lack of chronological evidences renders those art objects undatable and leads to diver gence of theories and opinions among scholars. This is true in the case of early Indian sculpture too. There are a number of male and femal statues that are generally attributed Mauryan. In fact, they present an appearance of archaic or ancient stylistic features, but a careful scrutiny makes such an attribution questionable, and the present writer has come to a conclusion that some of them should not be dated as early as the Maurya Period. This article is the first part of stylistic researches on the early ancient Indian statuary represented by Yakṣa-Yakṣi images, of which he had an opportunity to survey and take picture the large number of important works in 1958–59.
After noting the general feature of YakṣaYakṣi image worship in ancient India, the author proceeds to examine in detail (1) the female deity excavated at Didarganj (Pl. I), (2) the standing Yakṣa from Parkham (Pl. II) together with the bust from Baroda, (3) the two standing Yakṣas unearthed at Patna. All these statues have been ascribed to the Maurya Period by most Indian art historians.
It is generally admitted that the female deity, so-called chauri-bearer, from Didarganj, is comparable in style and technique to the art of Asoka pillars. The author, too, is of the same view, permitting a little difference ; and he questions the validity of B. Rowland's recent attempt to bring it closer in style and in time to the Yakṣīs of Sānchi toraṇas. It is true that the influences from ancient Iran and the West are undeniable in the official art of the Aśoka's reign, but we cannot fail to notice the process of Indianization of foreign elements already well advanced even in the Sārnāth capital, the masterpiece of the time. Compared with the latter, the female deity in question, of which plastic feeling and expression are Indian, reveals a more Indianized phase of the Mauryan official art. And it will be almost safe to look upon its style as the late Maurya. By the way, this
deity or chauri-bearer is no other than a Yakṣī, demi-goddess in the indigenous worship, and on it we can see an idealized female figure modelled from a Mauryan court lady.
As to the colossal Yakṣa from Parkham, which shows the archaic style and immature technique, the present writer is in agreement with others who appropriately attributed it to an earlier period, explaining as a product of the indigenous Indian art of the time, that had birth without any foreign influence. The archaism of the statue, however, should not lead us to too old a period, because it has an inscription of so-called Mauryan scripts, which tells us it was intended a Yakṣa Maṇibhadra. The early years of the second century B. C., either the late Maurya or the early Śunga, seems a reasonable date for this work. It is to be noted that the statue constitutes the sculptural source, from which we can trace the stylistic development of the Śunga art from Bhārhut, Sānchi II to Budhagayā, etc. The same is the case of Yakṣa from Baroda, which, though mutilated and much obliterated, has the identical characteristics in style and technique.
Lastly, the two Yakṣa statues from Patna, which must have been chiseled in the same workshop, have been positively thought to date from the Maurya, and L. Bachhofer has gone so far as to regard it older than these examples just mentioned. But the particular oblique folds of the dhoti (loin cloth) and the advanced expression in the details of the body are different from the Didarganj Yakṣī in its fundamental plastic feeling, which was as noted above, a product of the amalgamation of the evolved official art and the primitive native one in the Maurya Period. Their volume, stiffness and other plastic features will rather bring them close to the Buddhas at Mathurā in early Kushān, which are exemplified by the standing Buddha from Sārnāth, dated 3 rd year of Kaniṣka's reign (mid-2 nd century). This observation seems useful in proving the abrupt appearance of the massive Indian type of early Baddha images, and the two Yakṣas will be given a due stylistic position as the forerunner of the Buddhist statuary at Mathurā. The inscription on the scarf of one of the Yaksa which cannot be older than the first century A. D. from the palaeographical ground, may be taken as a clue to the date of the statue. Contrary to these scholars who want to see on these two Yakṣas a Mauryan style and accordingly suppose the inscription to be a later addition, the present author underlines that it must have been incised simultaneously with the statue.journal articl
The censor without, the censor within: the resistance of Johnstone’s improv to the social and political pressures of 1950s Britain
No full textKeith Johnstone's improv, popularly known through the Theatresports format, was forged in the cultural and historical context of 1950s Britain. In this paper I will argue that Johnstone's incarnation of theatrical improvisation was defined by its reaction to the normalising forces exerted by the social elite upon the broader population and by civilised society upon the individual.
Johnstone's improv was a reaction against the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor the British stage and a challenge to the internalised 'censor' British society of the time implanted in the minds of his students, stunting their creative imaginations. Johnstone borrowed elements of professional wrestling to break down the regimented conventions of the theatre space and enliven the spectator-performer relationship. As well as echoing Roland Barthes’ idealistic analysis of professional wrestling (Barthes, 1984: n.p.), Johnstone’s improv shares Barthes’ critique of the authority of the author and allows meaning to be generated out of the encounter between performers and spectators in the instant of the performance’s emergence. Through these processes, Johnstone’s improv defies the censor without (The Lord Chamberlain) by rooting out the censor within (the socially learnt inhibitions to the creative imagination).
By delineating the political and social pressures at play in the historical context of 1950s Britain and the ways that the stylistic conventions of Johnstone's improv resist and subvert these forces, I will demonstrate the emancipatory power latent in this mode of popular performance. This is a particularly timely analysis given the increasing authority of free market economics to dictate what appears on contemporary British stages, and the internalised censor that panoptical CCTV and social media is implanting within the minds of British citizens today
The spontaneity drain: the social pressures that shaped and then exiled Keith Johnstone's improvisation
No full textKeith Johnstone’s Improvisation had an oppositional relationship to the social and historical conditions of 1950s Britain under which it developed. Its structure and performative dynamic were protests against the normalising forces exerted by the social elite upon the broader population and by civilised society upon the individual. Within this context, the Royal Court Theatre acted as an incubator that allowed Johnstone to develop his subversive theories of performance, drawing on elements of professional wrestling to break down the regimented conventions of the theatre space and enliven the spectator-performer relationship. Eventually Johnstone entered a self-imposed exile from the society that shaped this form of performance and established The Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary, Canada.
This paper will analyse three relationships vital to this narrative: The oppositional reaction of Johnstone's improvisation to the social pressures of 1950's Britain, the creative glasshouse that The Royal Court Theatre provided for Johnstone within this broader cultural context, and the effects that the new social situation of Calgary, Canada had on Johnstone's practice.
At the conclusion of the paper I will draw out the consequences of these analyses for contemporary British society and attempt to identify the normalising forces at work within this context, how our arts institutions and creative incubators might foster novel reactions to these pressures, and how public policy might be shaped in order to encourage artists to remain in Britain so that we might benefit from their continued contribution to our cultural discourses
Across Space and Time: Commonalities in Natyashastra, The Republic, and Poetics
Get PDFBy the time Chandragupta Maurya established the Mauryan Empire in 322 B.C., Plato, the Greek philosopher had already envisaged an ideal commonwealth and had captured its principles in his The Republic, banishing all poets from his ideal state; and Aristotle, who started off as a student of Plato, had already presented to the world a clear rebuttal to Plato in his treatise, Poetics. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence to support the hypothesis that Bharata’s Natyasastra written sometime between 2nd century B.C. and 2nd century A.D. was influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics, or that, since the date of Natyasastra’s publication is so uncertain, Natyasastra in some way had an influence on Poetics. But this lack of evidence does not undermine the fact that in the Mauryan period (322 B.C. to 185 B.C.), there was an eager influx of Greek diplomats and explorers like Megasthenesin the subcontinent, who were not only political and economic emissaries, but also cultural ambassadors. Neither does this lack of evidence undermine the possibility of an influence, on either side of the theorists. But the case under consideration is not the existence of any physical evidence that could establish a connection, but rather that connection or no connection, Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics and Bharata’s Natyasastra have a common thread. All the three works are in some way or other an exposition on the imitative art of poetry and drama, and inevitably, each is linked to the other, if in nothing else, then at least in terms of comparative analysis
Enhanced estimation of population mean via exponential-type estimator using dual auxiliary inputs
No full textWithout having to interview every person, we may draw conclusions about the whole population by estimating the population mean, a fundamental summary statistic that is obtained from a sample. For example, using a sample to estimate the population’s mean income, height, or academic achievement may provide crucial information that supports sociological study, strategic business choices, and government. In order to enhance the estimate of a population mean, this article proposes a ratio-cum-product exponential estimator. This estimator makes use of additional information gathered from two transformed auxiliary variables that have been collected within the setting of simple random sampling without replacement. The suggested estimator’s bias and mean squared error are articulated up to the first degree of approximation. This is done in order to validate accuracy. Additionally, we conduct empirical and thorough simulation studies, demonstrating that the proposed estimators consistently surpasses its competitors
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