The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c16.4

c16.4

The dangers from within were not less alarming. For centuries the overgrowth of monastic institutions and the popularity of the ascetic ideal, which not only orthodox Brahmans and Jains but the Buddhist Sangha preached and practised, had been slowly sapping the manhood of India and laying the country open to the barbarians of Asia. Indo-Aryan thinkers had for long realised the danger, and the doctrine of *karma-yoga*, attributed in the Bhagavad-Gîta to the hero of the Mahâbhârata, Krishna, was a clarion call to the Aryan people to face the realities of life and to defend their Dharma against the common foe.