Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c14.8

c14.8

The disintegration of the power of the Indo-Greeks which took place in the first century A. D , would, in ordinary circumstances, have coincided with the inevitable decline of the Hellenistic culture that was an accompaniment of their rule. It was however the reverse that actually occurred. For, at the same time that the dominion of the Greeks was ending, a movement was being created which was the means of reviving and maintaining in a remarkable manner some of the characteristics and structure of their art. This took the form of a development of the Buddhist religion of such intensity and purpose that it can have had few equals The focus and centre of the movement was the country of Gandhara, and it expressed itself by the establishment of a very large number of monasteries, so that, like the cult of Lamaism in Tibet, it is evident that an unlimited proportion of the population was employed in the service of the creed As owing to the course of history, Afghanistan has, during most of the last millennium, been inhabited by a most zealous Islamic people, it is not easy to visualize this country as a stronghold of the Buddhists faith but, that such was the case, is proved by the profusion of its structural remains. For over the entire country the ruins recording the Buddhist occupation are visible, chiefly in the form of monasteries situated on the crest of the hills or on the mountain slopes, in the same manner as the innumerable white pagodas are distributed on the heights following the course of the Irrawady river in Burma Around Peshawar, Rawalpindi, and in the Swat valley and its neighbourhood, ruins of monasteries may be counted by the dozen, while in the Kabul valley alone there are some fifty examples These buildings, some of them very extensive, together with many other structural and even rock-cut evidences, testify that this territory was not only the home of a large population of devout followers of the Great Teacher, but also that they expressed their devotion in a material and substantial form