The Age of the Imperial Guptas c8.4

c8.4

Even at the present day, there is considerable divergence of opinion amongst scholars regarding the true type of temples of Gupta period proper. Earlier writers were of opinion that like most modern and mediaeval temples, temples of the Gupta type also possessed *Śikharas* or spires. The most prominent examples cited by Cunningham and other earlier writers are the great brick temples at Bhitargaon in the Cawnpore district and Mahābodhi or Bodh-gaya in the Gaya district. The same class of writers described other Gupta temples, *e.g.*, those at Sanchi, Tigowa in the Jubbulpur district and at Bodh-Gaya as being flat-roofed. Recent discoveries of Gupta temples have proved that the Gupta temple proper did not possess a *Śikhara*. In the case of the Mahābodhi temple at Bodh-Gaya the arguments produced for assigning it to the Gupta period are: that it was seen by the Chinese pilgrim Yuan Chwang, that the dimensions¹ given by him agree with those of the present temple before its repairs, that the Ceylonese king Meghavarṇa sent an embassy to Samudragupta asking for a permission to build a monastery at Bodh-Gaya², and finally the Chinese pilgrim I-Tsing states that the Mahābodhi *Vihāra* was built by the Ceylonese. Chavannes has proved from Chinese records that the Mahābodhi *Vihāra* was built by a king of Ceylon. “Near the Bodhi tree was the Mahābodhi Vihāra built by a king of Ceylon.”¹ Writers like Mr. E. B. Havell think that the Mahābodhi temple was built in the first century B.C.² After a thorough examination of the entire structure of the Mahābodhi temple the writer could find no trace, both inside and outside, of decorative motifs of the Gupta period in any part of it. On the other hand all other temples whether Buddhist or Hindu, which can be definitely assigned to the Gupta period on the ground of epigraphy, always show the use of decorative motifs distinctive of the Gupta period, e.g., the original main Shrine and the Gupta monasteries at Sarnath, the Hindu temple at Muṇḍeśvarī near Bhabua in the Arrah district, the Gupta temple at Budh-Gaya, the temple of Pārvatī at Nachna-Kuthara in the Ajaygadh State, the temple of Śiva at Bhumara in the Nagod State, the later Gupta temple at Deogadh in the Jhansi district and the Gupta temple at Sanchi in the Bhopal State.