Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c31.2

c31.2

ONE of the richest and most prolific developments of the Indo-Aryan style of architecture was that which prevailed in Western India during the early centuries of the second millennium. The majority of the buildings were erected in the interim of over two and a half centuries between Mahmud of Ghazni's expedition to Somnath in Kathiawar in A.D. 1025-26, and the conquest of this part of the country by the Sultans of Delhi in 1298. It is true that the Afghan ruler's raid, with iconoclasm as its prime object, for the time being threw the whole of this territory into disorder, but after his return to Ghazni, the inhabitants appear to have quickly recovered from the effects of the blow, and to have repaired the temples that he had desecrated and despoiled Then ensued a period of comparative peace in the western region together with a condition of marked material prosperity, one indication of which was the number and character of the buildings produced at this time. The settled state of the country was largely due to the stable rule of the Solanki dynasty, a Saivite line whose power extended over a large area centering around Gujarat, and including Kathiawar, Kach, (Cutch) and much of what is now Rajputana, with the capital at Anahilavada-Pattana, corresponding to the comparatively modern town of Patan, north-west of Ahmedabad. The wealth that came to this part of India was acquired mainly through its geographical position, as Gujarat was to India what Venice was to Europe, the focus of commerce of both the east and the west. And the reaction to this state of general affluence was the creation in substance and sensibility of a form of religious architecture in accordance with the favourable circumstances that then prevailed