The Rashtrakutas and their Times c20.28

c20.28

Such examples were not confined to the Deccan alone. Govindachandra, Gahadwal king of Kanauj, himself a Saivite, was married to a Buddhist princess Kumāradevī, and is known to have given six villages for the maintenance of the monks in the Jetavana of Sravasti.²² Madanapāla of Bengal, himself a Buddhist, gave the gift of a village to a Brahmana for reciting the Mahabharata to his queen Chitramatikā.²³ It seemed as if the people had realised that there was no cultural difference between the three religions, and that a man may follow any one of them or make a combination, suitable to his own individual temperament, of the acceptable elements of any or all of them. The case seems to have been somewhat similar to that of a modern man of culture, who fails to realise any inconsistency in being a member, at one and the same time, of different societies formed for the promotion of literature, fine arts and morality. There was a certain amount of feeling exhibited in philosophical writings of the period, but even there behind the superficial clash, there was an inner movement of synthesis. It is now almost universally recognised that the scheme of Advaita philosophy, as outlined by S'ankara was largely influenced by the S'ūnyavāda of Nāgārjuna; many of the verses in the *Mūlamadhyamakārikā* of the latter anticipate the position later assumed by S'ankara.²⁴