Studies in Indian Art c7.s2.37

c7.s2.37

During the Gupta period, Indian sculpture, painting, drama and music witnessed an all round efflorescence. The tremendous outburst of creative activity on a national scale, engulfing the country from Mirapur Khas in Sindh to Dalparbatiya on the Brahmaputra in Assam, established for the first time a national style of art distinguished by common characteristics and activating from numerous centres. There is as yet no adequate study which can be said to do justice to Gupta art comprising its rich sculpture, architecture, painting, terracottas, beads, pottery, and details of ornamentation, decorative motifs, styles of hairdressing and fashions in costumes and fabrics as they were developed in the age of Kālidāsa and Bāṇabhaṭṭa. A sumptuous volume like the Sanchi topas will have to be undertaken to present the material with suitable reproductions, and to interpret it in terms of the contemporary literary evidence. For no other period of Indian history is the cultural material so rich and so amply documented in its literature and art specimens as for the Gupta Age. We have, for example, reference to the various styles of hair, as Alaka also called Valibhṛit keśa (frizzled locks), Bhramaraka (Bee coiffure), Līlā-mayūra Keśapāśa (Peacock-feather style), the honey-comb style, the sīmanta parting of the hair and its decoration with a forehead jewel known as the chaṭula tilakamaṇi.