Gupta Art Zenith of Artistic Creation

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Gupta Age is designated as The Golden Age in the annals of Indian history for multifaceted development in all the domains of economy, art, literature, music, medicine et al. It appears that a new era begun with the advent of Guptas on the political horizon of India and they provided a political and cultural identity to the Indian sub-continent. Under the patronage of Gupta kings a complete new set of literature was written, which gave way for novel ideas and experiments in the field of art and literature. The puranas, written during this period conceptualized the iconic details of different deities and divinities, and literatures like Brihad Samhita by Varaha Mihira and Vishnu dharmottara Purana formulated the tala-mana (standard). The novel ideas and experiments, supported with tala-mana, with Indian context in particular, carried the Indian art to the zenith of classicism.

A group of scholars deny the designation Golden Age', assigned to the Gupta period. They hold, there was nothing but gold (in terms of the coinage) in the Gupta period to declare it The Golden Age'. They call the preceding Kushana Age as the Golden Age in Indian history. But the Kushanas had a very limited dominion to control in the Indian sub-continent and achievements in other fields of art and literature during their period was also very limited. If their achievements are weighed against those of the Guptas, one can easily cast his opinion.

The last National Seminar, organized by Patna Museum (Directorate of Museums, Department of Art, Culture & Youth, Govt. of Bihar), was on The Kushana Art'. In this chain the next National Seminar, we decided to hold on the topic. Gupta Art: Zenith of Artistic Creation' to have discussions on different issues and dimensions of the Gupta Art. In this seminar about fifty scholars from different parts of India participated and 29 (twenty nine) research papers were presented in four academic sessions. Each paper generated much heat for discussion and opinions. All the scholars equivocally declared 'Gupta Age' as The Golden Age' in Indian history and this may be cited as the outcome of this seminar.