Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c14.2

c14.2

DURING the centuries immediately before and after the beginning of the Christian era, it has been shown that the Buddhist communities in the middle and southern parts of the peninsula were actively engaged in producing monuments, such as masonry stupas, wooden chaitya halls, and rock-cut monasteries, according to the prevailing Hinayana system of the Buddhist faith. In the region towards the north-west of the country, however, a movement of a very different order was becoming apparent, and one which was destined to react, in a marked manner, on the cultural activities, of the people. The principal characters concerned in this great drama, which had Hither Asia as its setting, were offshoots of four races, or nationalities: (1) Greeks, (2) Parthians, (3) Scythians, and (4) Indians. It was the aspirations of these people, which caused what is now the country of Afghanistan, and the North-West frontier of India, to become the meeting place of streams of culture issuing from both European and Asiatic sources. And as a result there emerged in the early centuries of the first millennium, a form of Indo-Buddhist art, in itself of considerable significance, but still more important on account of its implications, as it affected, to some extent, much of the art of Asia.