Studies in Indian Art c13.s1.3

c13.s1.3

This was the radiating spirit of buoyant life in the Gupta period. Verily aesthetic culture was wedded to spiritual culture during the Golden Age, as never before and after. Life is rich session of beauty, a lāvaṇya sattra, or rūpa sattra, in which the real emphasis is directed to invoke the presence of Śrī-Lakṣmī as a blessing on the visage of our earthly existence. The Goddess of Beauty is the supreme divinity to be realised as the aim of all our integrated efforts, and objects of art are but symbols of her sparkling effulgence. Besides her concrete manifestation in many a beautiful form comprised in the octave of aesthetic creativity, Goddess Śrī as the consort of Viṣṇu fills the cup of life with superb ambrosia for the ennobling of the human mind and spirit. This confers a higher purpose on Rūpa or Beauty. The Gupta citizen was conscious of this supreme mission; he realised that life should be filled with forms of external beauty in order that it become a fit shrine for the permanent beauty of the spirit as manifesting through the higher moral and religious perfections. Each higher being is a scaling summit of pāramitās, moral and spiritual perfections, and the beauty of the body and the charm of objects that attend are invariable concomitants of that supreme realisation. Such was the positive idealism of life in the Gupta age—beauty and moral perfection must go together; beauty and purity are like the warp and woof of that richly embroidered fabric termed "Life": this is the meaning underlying the statement of Kālidāsa—na rūpaṃ pāpavrittaye (beauty—but not for sin)—in the inspiring message and essence of the aesthetic culture permeating the Golden Age.