Ringstone

They are carved out of stone, with very fine relief on the top side that includes several zones of decoration surrounding a circular opening in the centre.

Typically the innermost zone, which runs down the sloping sides of the hole, has four standing female figures, many are nude "with fully exposed genitalia", bent knees pointing outward, and heels together, with jewelry and elaborate hairstyles, and trees separate them.

[10] The example in the Cleveland Museum of Art, where its three pairs of standing female figures with wide, full-length skirts are standing in the innermost section with their feet pointing toward the hole, it is followed by a cable or rope pattern border, then a border of fifteen animals in profile with their feet also toward the central hole.

One suggestion is that they were matrices for moulding as jewelry created by beating thin sheets of metal, probably gold foil that always has been important in Indian culture, but evidence to support that theory has very few surviving examples from ancient times.

[17] Although not favored by some scholars,[18] this theory may have gained some ground following the 2014 discovery in Thailand that was found near fragments of thin gold foil, one of which had an animal pattern very similar to that on the ringstone discovered at the same time.

[23] Apart from the recent Thai find, the findspots are distributed (such as Mauryan territory) across north India, ranging from Taxila in the Punjab (now Pakistan) in the northwest to Patna, Bihar in the east.

[24] As they are easily portable and have very consistent characteristics, they all may have been made in a single centre, for which Pataliputra (now Patna), the capital of the successive Mauryan and Sunga empires, is one obvious candidate.

[25] The ringstone tradition seems to have developed into the manufacture of the discstone, which is similar in shape, but having a flat top with a plain circular space in the center, rather than a hole that pierces the object.

They also are manufactured in stone, but are not quite so precisely carved, with mostly plant-based decoration that is not divided into narrow circular zones in the same way, and they have abstract designs or symbols.

"Ringstone with Four Goddesses and Four Date Palms" that has a four-pointed star motif in a border, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) [ 1 ]
Detail of a complete ringstone having a central border with figures of women in full-length skirts separated by trees, a border motif of fifteen different animals, and a border motif of four-pointed stars, Cleveland Museum of Art
Broken section of a ringstone with a woman in the characteristic posture, flanked by birds, probably geese, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) [ 2 ]
Discstone, first century BCE, Metropolitan Museum of Art [ 26 ]