The Age of the Imperial Guptas c9.9

c9.9

Codrington states “The Gupta century provides a definite series of motives, which increases in number and imaginative complexity as the period of the great cave-temples draws near. It was at Ajanta, Aurangabad, and Elura that the mediæval period began. It stands for a definite culture, but one differing considerably from the Gupta. The one is classical, the other, romantic. Sir John Marshall is rightly stirred by the simplicity of the Gupta shrines. The ‘refinement’ and ‘clear definition’, not only of these little buildings, but of the sculpture that adorns them, is striking and unique”¹. The time has now come for a broader and more definite delineation of the most marked features of Gupta art and it cannot be better illustrated than in the process of the metamorphosition of the Mathurā school of sculpture. The new ideal as expressed by the images of the beginning of the 5th century shows a close approximation to the style of Benares in its most noticeable features, viz :—