Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c38.31

c38.31

Apart from the intrinsic quality of the art and architecture of two of the movements described above, namely that which expressed itself in the great Hindu-Buddhist monastic monuments on the one hand, and that which produced the temples and palaces of the Palas and Senas on the other, in a word the Eastern School, these two movements together were destined to affect profoundly the advancing tide of Indo-Buddhist civilization which was already beginning to overflow into the wide range of countries comprising Greater India. While the medium by which this Indian religio-culture was conveyed eastward was fundamentally the dynamic power of Hindu-Buddhism, which carried all before it, towards the later centuries of the first millennium, the form it eventually assumed took its source from the movements which grew up and were so firmly founded in the holy land of Buddhism on the Gangetic plain. Changed in outward appearance by their change of environment and other influences the architectural achievements of such countries as Burma, Cambodia, Java and, to a certain extent Ceylon, in the mediaeval period, were basically of Indian extraction So much so that the building art of the various civilizations which comprise Greater India may be regarded as belonging to one broad school, each of the races concerned working out its architectural conceptions according to its own individual ideals, but with the whole evolution created, developed, unified and to a certain extent standardised by an intellectual, religious and physical awakening which originally proceeded from India.