A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s1.4

c13.s1.4

In Bihār the Muslim onslaught at the close of the twelfth century overthrew Buddhism suddenly, and scattered all over India those few monks who survived the indiscriminate massacres committed by the iconoclast armies of Islam. The rich monasteries of Sārnāth near Benares soon shared the fate of the communities in Bihār, and layers of ashes in the ruins testify to this day the violence of the conquerors. Hindu art of all kinds, Buddhist included, was practically stamped out in the north-eastern provinces by the Muhammadan conquest. It lingered, however, in Orissa longer than in Bihār, and some of the best Orissan work dates from the thirteenth century. The conquest of Orissa was not completed until Akbar's time, in the sixteenth century, but it may be said that from the fourteenth century the history of art in all the north-eastern provinces is concerned only with Muslim forms.