History of Indian and Indonesian Art c8.s3.3

c8.s3.3

The period is often described as one of the revival of Brāhmaṇism and of Sanskrit learning and literature. But actually there is no evidence of any preceding lack of continuity in the development of Brāhmaṇical culture. The *kāvya* style is already foreshadowed in the *Rāmāyaṇa* and fairly well developed in the second century A. D. Certainly there had never existed a "Buddhist India" that was not as much and at the same time and in the same areas a Hindū India. In any case, an age of heightened aesthetic consciousness, of final redactions of the Epics and *purāṇas*, and of codifications and systematisation in the arts¹ must have been preceded by centuries, not of inactivity, but of intense and creative activity. The period is thus one of culmination, of florescence, rather than of renaissance. No more than a passing allusion can be made here to the close parallels that exist at this time between the development of art and literature: the same abundance pervades the Sanskrit *kāvya* literature, the Ajaṇṭā paintings and the decoration of the Gupta reliefs.