Studies in Indian Art c7.s2.2

c7.s2.2

Pericles warned the citizens of Athens when its sense-bound art was at its height in these words: "We support art but with a certain restraint and we support science without becoming unmanly." In the golden age of Indian art, that is the Gupta period when Indian art had outgrown its craft traditions and really became fine art—*Lalita Kalā* as the poet called it—Kālidāsa gave utterance to a similar ideal of Indian aesthetics: "Na Rūpam Pāpavṛttaye". "Beauty ofcourse is our ideal, but not sin." It is true that men and women in the Gupta Age cultivated beauty as a religious cult. Both in the Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa and in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā of Varāhamihira we find mention of *Rūpasattra*, i.e. Beauty-culture, and the reference certainly relates to the popular passion for beautiful form in the Gupta Age. As Kālidāsa puts it: "O Pārvatī, the common belief that beauty is not for sin, seems to be unexceptionable" (Kumāra-Sambhava, V. 36). This was the ideal followed in the domain of art and life. The Māra-conquering Buddha represents the spiritual truth of the Gupta Age, and the vitality of its culture derives its force from the ideal of the Higher Wisdom (*Anuttara Jñāna*) to which reference is found in many inscriptions on the pedestals of Buddha images.