The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c15.10

c15.10

It is a common but erroneous view of the history of Indo-Aryan religion to regard this new movement as the herald of what Europeans describe as the triumph of Brahmanism, or of Hinduism over Buddhism. Brahmans were among the first disciples of the Buddha, and it was the Brahman acceptance of his teaching in the Deer Park at Sarnath dominions were in contact with the Roman Empire, and included part of the old Græco-Baktrian Empire of Seleukus. As this new dynasty grew in power and affluence, numbers of Græco-Roman masons and carpenters, who were always travelling in search of employment, were attracted to the Kushan capital, Purushapûra—the modern Peshawar—to assist in building the monasteries, chaityas, and chaitya-houses which were required for the crowds of Buddhist monks who collected there. This feeble backward splash of Aryan culture which thus flowed over North-west India until the Kushan dynasty came to an end in the fourth century A.D., created that Gandharan school of building and sculpture the influence of which upon Indian art has been so strangely misinterpreted and exaggerated by Western scholars.