Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.55

c7.55

Nepal is almost the only part of India in which the traditions of this grand epoch of religious art, extending, roughly speaking, over the first millennium of the Christian era, has been continued down to modern times; for in India itself they have been either completely extirpated by the Muhammadans, or greatly modified under later Arab and Persian influences. Nepal was the refuge of the Buddhists and Hindu monks from the furious assaults of Islam in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and there many artistic treasures have escaped the Muhammadan iconoclasts of the time of Aurangzîb.