page_title: Mauryan art
section_title: Ringstones
hierarchical_section_title: Mauryan art / Sculpture / Ringstones
caption_attribution_description: India; Ringstone fragment; Sculpture
context_page_description: Mauryan art is the art, mostly sculpture, produced during the period of the Mauryan Empire, which was the first empire to rule, at least in theory, over most of the Indian subcontinent, between 322 and 185 BCE. It represented an important transition in Indian art from use of wood to stone. It was a royal art patronized by Mauryan kings especially Ashoka. Pillars, Stupas, caves are the most prominent survivals.
  The most significant remains of monumental Mauryan art include the remains of the royal palace and the city of Pataliputra, a monolithic rail at Sarnath, the Bodhimandala or the altar resting on four pilars at Bodhgaya, the rock-cut chaitya-halls in the Barabar Caves near Gaya including the Sudama cave bearing the inscription dated the 12th regnal year of Ashoka, the non-edict bearing and edict bearing pillars, the animal sculptures crowning the pillars with animal and vegetal reliefs decorating the abaci of the capitals and the front half of the representation of an elephant carved out in the round from a live rock at Dhauli.
  Ananda Coomaraswamy, writing in 1923, argued that the Mauryan art has three main phases.
context_section_description: The ringstone is a distinctive type of artefact and miniature sculpture made in India during the approximate period of the Mauryan Empire and the following Sunga Empire (187-78 BCE).  They are usually dated to the 3rd or 2nd centuries BCE.  They are shaped like a doughnut, but with straighter sides, and flat and plain on the bottom.  They are in stone, with the top side very finely carved in relief with several circular zones of decoration running around the hole in the centre.  When complete, they are about 2.5 to 4 inches across.
  The designs vary, but all examples are finely carved, despite their small size.  A number of components appear in a variety of variations. Typically the innermost zone, which runs down the sloping sides of the hole, has standing female figures, often nude or nearly so, but with jewellery and elaborate hairstyles, with trees in between them.  These may be called "goddesses", or "mother goddesses", and the trees, apparently of various species, as the tree of life, but these interpretations are not universally accepted.
  Their purpose, and any practical function, remains unclear and "enigmatic".  They may have a specific religious purpose, or a more general one promoting fertility, or been used to make jewellery by hammering metal foil over the designs.  About 70 have been found, many only as fragments, with a 2014 find in Thailand the first from outside the Indian subcontinent; it is assumed this was imported from India.
caption: Broken section with "goddess" flanked by birds, probably geese, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)[11]
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