Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 261

DECEMBER, 1933]
GEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS IN INDIAN ARCHEOLOGY
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more eccentric; anything more un-Indian or more un-Saracenic than a Kashmir mosque it would be difficult to conceive.
3. The Panjab is sterile in relics of the past.
4. South of the Salt Range a line of Buddhist stūpas follows the course of the Indus almost to the sea, a faint but quite clear echo of Gandhāra. Hinduism flourished in the ancient city of Brāhmanābād and in the port of Tatta, too; a reflex apparently of the culture of Gujarāt. Sassanian contacts are frequently in evidence, and the cult of the sun, of which Multan was a centre, owed its vogue, perhaps, to Zoroastrian influence. The Arab conquest (711 A.D.), which extended to Multān, cut Sind adrift from Indian life. Of the Arabs nothing of note survives. Under the Delhi Sultanate art revived at Multan, with a Persian leavening which gathered strength till it culminated in the intensively 'persianized' tombs of eighteenth century Hyderabad.
B. GANGETIC INDIA.
The Ganges plain, as already noted, comprises four main cultural areas, (1) the Midland, the home of Western Hindi, (2) a transitional area centring in Oudh, where Eastern Hindi, mediate between 'Inner' and 'Outer' languages, is spoken, (3) Bihar, or rather the area of Bihāri speech, and (4) cast of the salient of the Rājmahāl Hills, Bengal, with extensions into Assam and Orissa.
From Vedic literature it is inferred that 'Aryan 'culture, cstablished in the first instance in the Panjāb, shifted to the Mid-land and then down the Ganges-Jamunā doab, and finally embraced Oudh and N. Bihār. At each stage it grew less like the culture of the Rig-veda, and closer to the India of today; in short, it became 'indianized'. This indianized culture flooded Bengal, Orissa and Agsam and pressed on to Indo-China. Its 'area of standardization' lay between the Sutlej and the western border of Bengal. It saturated Buddhism and Jainism, which re-interpreted but did not repudiate it.
Of the pre-Buddhist culture of this area, except for some scattered finds of stone and copper implements, archæology knows nothing. The earliest datable remains are Mauryan, centring in Bihār, and of them the best known are based on Persian models; in fact, some scholars would postulate a “Magian period of Indian history. But Asoka's free standing pillars differ in many details from their structural prototypes at Persepolig; in short, they are not Persian, but Indian.
On the fall of the Mauryas other centres of cultural activity arose. The history of postMauryan art can be traced at Mathură, in the opposite end of the Ganges plain, or at Sārnāth near Benares. Mathurā was held by the Kushāns : naturally evidence of Kushan influence and and the Greek tradition which the Kushāns carried on is there abundant, mostly Jain, and intensively indianized. But the Kushan tradition is not alone in the field. Another factor, which owes little to Greece or Persia, is operative, crudely at first, but destined to bear fruit in the art of the Guptas, and to crystallize in the curvilinear spires and exuberant decoration of the 'Northern Style' of architecture. Its place of origin we do not know; there are several types of spire, none of which can be assigned to any particular area. Quite possibly they were evolved from the simpler village temples of Bihār, and bent bamboo roofing may or may not be their prototype. The style survives most completely in the temples of Orissa, where Muslims are so few. It extends, with local variations, throughout Upper India, as far west as Sind, into the Bombay Deccan to Pattadkal, within the Kanarese border, to Ganjām on the east (Mahendragiri, Mukhalingam) and even to Himālayan Kängrā. The 'Northern Style', however, and the Hinduism for which it stands, were not alone in the field. Under the longlived Pāla dynasty Bihār and Bengal, distinct as usual, as the ruins of Nālandā and Pahārpur testify, preserved their native Buddhism till the Muslims came.