@article{oai:tobunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00006879,
 author = {高田, 修 and Takata, Osamu},
 issue = {219},
 journal = {美術研究, The bijutsu kenkyu : the journal of art studies},
 month = {Aug},
 note = {Studies 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.},
 pages = {1--16},
 title = {マウリヤ時代の神像彫刻},
 year = {1962}
}