CHAPTER III
stūpas at sānchī, bharhut, and amarāvati
It will be understood from the preceding chapters that, though the earliest Vedic hymns may give the impression that the ancient Aryans in India knew little of the art of the city-builder, this is a very one-sided view of their history. The ritual of the Vedas was principally concerned with the Nature-spirits to which its prayers were addressed—with the animals offered in sacrifice, and the life of the farmstead which reared them. We must turn to the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana, with their vivid pictures of ancient Indian cities, to realise the civic side of Indo-Aryan life. Connecting these with the technical conditions already described, and with the known history of the Aryan people in Mesopotamia, the comparatively high development in which Indo-Aryan art is found in the earliest existing monuments will not appear surprising, but the natural outcome of the conditions which produced it. Before Mesopotamian history was made known by archæological research, it was assumed that the Aryan immigrations into India came exclusively through the passes of the Himālayas. But India was more accessible to the Aryans in Mesopotamia than it was to their brothers in Iran. The Sānchī and Bharhut sculptures give clear evidence of the contact of the Indo-Aryans with Egypt, Assyria,
