The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

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THE GOLDEN AGE: THE GUPTA PERIOD
The Gupta Period takes its name from the
founder of this dynasty, Chandragupta, crowned
King of Kings at Pataliputra in A.D. 320, who
asserted his power over the Ganges Valley. The
conquests of this Kshatriya sovereign, Chandragupta
I, and his successors, notably his son,
Samudragupta, came to include all of northern
India from Orissa to Ujjain. Once more, as
under the Mauryas, Magadha in the Bengal
Valley was the centre of the Empire. Chronologically
the Gupta Period may properly be
extended to include the reign of Harsha of
Kanauj (606-47), who revived the glories of the
dynasty following the interregnum after the
invasion of the White Huns in the fifth century.
Although temporarily under the rule of the first
Gupta sovereigns, the regions of north-western
India, the ancient Gandhara, were overrun by
the White Huns, and even after the death of the
last of these inhuman conquerors one hundred
years later, these provinces remained apart from
India proper. Neither the Gupta kings nor the
mighty conqueror, Harsha, were able to extend
their conquests to South India, which continued
to be governed by independent dynasties like
the Pallavas and Chalukyas, who had inherited
the ancient domains of the Andhras.
We gather from the accounts of the Chinese
visitors, Fa Hsien and Hsiian-tsang, that Buddhism,
both in its Mahayana and Hinayana
forms, flourished throughout the Gupta Empire
Although some of the old centres, like Kapilavastu
and Sravasti, had fallen into decay and
depopulation, and even Gaya was a ruinous
waste, the monasteries and towered stupas
shone golden in the sun at Mathura and
Pataliputra; at Nalanda was the great university
centre of Mahayana Buddhism, its cloisters so
crowded as to tax the defences and revenue of
the Empire. These centuries of Gupta rule also
marked the beginning of a Hindu revival
centring about a new cult of Vishnu, with
emphasis on Krishna as the exponent and divine
teacher of Vaishnava doctrine. Mahayana Buddhism
in this period was hardly different from
other divisions in the Hindu faith, and was
undergoing a process of intellectual absorption
into Hinduism that led to the final disappearance
of the religion of Sakyamuni from India.
Although often referred to as the Indian
Renaissance, the Gupta Period is not properly
speaking a rebirth, except in the political sense
as a reappearance of a unified rule that had not
been known since the extinction of the Maurya
Dynasty in the third century B.C. Purely Indian
ideals were never more fully expressed than in
this span of centuries, if only by reason of the
isolation from the Western world that ensued
with the gradual collapse of the Roman Empire
culminating in the appearance of the Goths in
410: foreign contacts, cultural and religious,
were now with the Far East and with southeastern
Asia, and in this exchange India was the
giver, the Far East the receiver.
Seldom in the history of peoples do we find a
period in which the national genius is so fully
and typically expressed in all the arts as in
Gupta India. Here was florescence and fulfilment
after a long period of gradual development,
a like sophistication and complete
assurance in expression in music, literature, the
drama, and the plastic arts. The Gupta Period
may well be described as 'classic' in the sense of
the word describing a norm or degree of perfection
never achieved before or since, and in the
perfect balance and harmony of all elements