The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c21.26

c21.26

The temples of Khajurâho may be regarded as typical both of the greatness and weakness of the architecture of the north of India in the period immediately preceding the Muhammadan conquest. In the south the decadence was deferred for at least two centuries later, for South Indian architecture hardly passed its zenith before the end of the tenth century. The demoralising effect of the Hun invasions and of Mahmûd of Ghaznî's devastating raids did not penetrate into Southern India, and probably on that account Aryan culture there retained its vitality much longer. The eighth century in the south was the beginning of an intellectual revival heralded by the appearance of the great philosopher Sankarâcharya, the protestant reformer and defender of Vedic religion. His mission, like that of the Buddha, was to free Indo-Aryan religion from the superstitious abuses which had accumulated round it and to propound a new philosophical synthesis of all the spiritual wisdom of Hinduism. But while the Buddha's doctrines were agnostic, Sankarâcharya's religious teaching was essentially pantheistic and his philosophy set forth a rationalistic theory of the First Cause based upon the teaching of the Upanishads and of the Bhagavad Gîta.