The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c29.119

c29.119

It is apparent, therefore, that the rule of the able and long-lived monarchs of the Gupta dynasty coincided with an extraordinary outburst of intellectual activity of all kinds. The personal patronage of the kings no doubt had much effect, but deeper causes must have been at work to produce such results. Experience proves that the contact or collision of diverse modes of civilization is the most potent stimulus to intellectual and artistic progress, and, in my opinion, the eminent achievements of the Gupta period are mainly due to such contact with foreign civilizations, both on the east and on the west. The evidence as to the constant interchange of communications with China is abundant, and although the external testimony to intercourse with the Roman empire is less copious, the fact of such intercourse is indisputable. The conquest of Mālwa and Surāshtra or Kāthiāwār by Chandra-gupta II Vikramāditya, towards the close of the fourth century, opened up ways of communication between Upper India and western lands which gave facilities for the reception of European ideas. The influence of the Alexandrian schools on the astronomy of Āryabhata is undoubted, and the imitation of Roman coins by Gupta kings is equally obvious. In art and literature the proof of the action of foreign influence is necessarily more difficult, but in my judgement the reality of that action is well established. It is difficult, for instance, to deny the relationship between the sculpture of the Sleeping Vishnu at Deogarh and the class of Graeco-Roman works represented by the Endymion at Stockholm. It is impossible to pursue the subject further in this place, but the references in the note will enable any inquirer interested to follow up the cumulative proofs that the remarkable intellectual and artistic output of the Gupta period was produced in large measure by reason of the contact between the civilization of India and that of the Roman empire. Some critics have thought that Chinese ideas may be traced in the Ajaṇṭā frescoes, and they may be right.¹