Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c30.2

c30.2

A DEVELOPMENT of great beauty in the art of temple building expressed itself in parts of Rajputana, Central India, and the adjacent country in the last centuries of the first millennium. Such a virile movement as that inspired by the Gupta dynasty in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries was naturally succeeded, even after the decay of that intellectual regime, by a later flowering of a singularly rich and lovely nature Unfortunately much of this fine form of architecture lay in that part of the country which suffered most from the earlier invasions of the Muhammadans, so that examples are comparatively rare and fragmentary. This succeeding phase of the Gupta style flourished from about the eighth to the eleventh centuries, shortly after which the demolition of many of the temples in northern India by the followers of the conquerors not only removed the existing examples, but brought to an end any further building of this kind.