The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c16.59

c16.59

The particular cult of Indo-Aryan religion favoured by individual sovereigns of the different dynasties is also a matter of minor interest. The epoch from the beginning of the fourth to the end of the eighth century A.D., which was the golden age of Indian literature, when, as is generally believed, the great Indo-Aryan epics were given their present literary forms, and the Bhagavad Gîta, India's Bible, was written as a synthesis of the religious teaching of the time—an age when the classics of Indian drama, poetry, painting, and music were produced, brought to a close by the appearance of the great philosopher of the Vedânta, Sankarâcharya—will be most fitly summarised architecturally by a description of the rock-cut vihâras and chaitya-houses of Ajantâ, which formed during this period one of the famous universities of India.