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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 03 Aug 2021

Taken: 03 Aug 2021

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R.C.Mujumdar •
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Buddha

Buddha

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
. . . The Gandhara school, as its name implies, flourished in the North-western frontier of India. As has already been related this region was ruled over by a number of Greek princes for about three hundred years. The influx of this new element produced a novel school of art in this meeting ground of East and West, in which the skill and technique of the Greek art was applied to Indian ideals and Indian subjects. The result was an Indo-Hellenic school, which produced some of the finest sculptures -- notably images of Buddha and Bhodisatva -- that ancient India can boast of. Its chief characteristic is the realistic representation of human figures, as opposed to conventional form lacking any physiological details generally found in India. It no doubt influenced to some extent it was itself influenced by, and other schools of Indian art, such as those of Mathura and Amaravati but the nature and extent of this influence are matters of controversy. It failed however, to penetrate deeply into the interior, and had no share in the later development of Indian art. ‘But outside India the Gandhara School achieved a grand success by becoming a parent of all Buddhist art of Eastern or Chinese, Turkestan, Mongolia, China, Korea and Japan.

. . . . In India, art has always been a hand-maid of religion. The period under review saw the great preponderance of Buddhism, and hence the art was employed mostly in the service of that religion. The architects built Buddhist stupas, monasteries, and churches, while the sculptors found their motif or subject-matter in the legends of Buddha and the stories associated with his life and religion. ~ Page 227

The effects of the Huna en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huna_people invasion can be clearly perceived in the annals of Hiuen Tsang. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang Throughout North western India he scarcely came across any trace of living Buddhism but the ruins of thousands of temples and monasteries, deserted and dilapidated, told the tale of its former splendor. When Hiuen Tsang visited this country (629-645 A.D) , Harshavardhana’s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsha patronage of Buddhism gave a temporary least of life and vigour to the decaying religion in North India, but although the Chinese pilgrim did not plainly admit it, the facts recorded hold except in Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. In other parts of India Buddhism was carrying on a life and death struggle with Jainism and the newly revived Brahmanical religion or Hinduism. ~ Page 428
3 years ago. Edited 8 months ago.

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