A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c12.7

c12.7

Until quite recently the merits of Gupta sculpture were not generally or freely recognized. Owing to the destruction wrought by iconoclast Muslim armies and kings who overran and held in strength almost every part of the Gupta empire, few remains of the period exist above ground, except in out-of-the-way localities, and our present knowledge of Gupta art is largely the result of excavation. Sārnāth, especially, has proved to be a rich treasure-house of Gupta, as well as of Kushān and earlier art.² The ravages of the Huns did not wholly stop the practice of the arts of civilization, and one of the surprises of recent exploration has been the discovery of many large Buddhist monasteries at Sārnāth and other places in Hindustan dating from the fifth and sixth centuries. The sculpture of the period is mainly Buddhist and Brahmanical, the Jain works being few and of little artistic interest.